


The Strait of Hecate

by Red



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alaska, Alien Biology, Alternate Universe - Human/Troll Society, Canon-Typical Violence, Death References, Friends With Benefits, Goodbye Sex, Gore, Hemospectrum, Illustrated, Late Night Conversations, Loneliness, M/M, Nightmares, Old Age, Older Characters, Post-Sburb/Sgrub, Quadrant Confusion, Sex Toys, Tentabulges, Troll Romance, Unrequited Love, xenokink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-14
Updated: 2012-12-18
Packaged: 2017-11-18 15:29:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 34,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/562584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Red/pseuds/Red
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Look at me, Eridan. I'm an old man. If we were back on a planet that wasn't made out of pantswetting clawsucking grubs, I'd already be sliced and fed to the maritime wolfbeasts. You seriously fucking think I can still get it up?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you, as always, to [metron](http://metron-ariston.livejournal.com/) and [youdidnotseeme](http://youdidnotseeme.tumblr.com/) for editing. 
> 
> Warning for mention of off-screen character death for this specific chapter. As a side-note, tags concerning violence and gore are pretty much only pertinent for a later chapter, where I'll leave a more detailed beginning note.

At least, you've thought often enough, the oceans on this planet are fuckin leagues cleaner than the ones you'd once been swimming. 

But aside from that--and a pleasant abundance of lonely places--you have never been all too impressed with this Basically Earth you've been stuck on for the last number of sweeps. 

From the start, you'd been right suspicious of it. A planet where everyone stayed around after their adult molt. For that matter, it's a fuckin planet where most everyone doesn't molt _at all_. 

But, when you're feeling generous, you have to admit it isn't cullingly awful. The few sea trolls asides from you took to warmer waters, leaving you well enough alone to some cold rocks off of what's maybe-Canada and maybe-America, depending on where you're swimming; the land trolls what make it up this far north tend to keep their proper fear of your general superiority. Nobody is exactly keen on swimming by and visiting--sides from Fef--and that suits you more than fuckin fine. 

There's not so many humans where you live, either, though not so few you've escaped them completely. Matter of, you've found yourself making friendly enough with some, on occasion, though not intentionally. It happens that taking out your aggression toward land dwellers messing with your stretch of sea makes you popular with some other humans--including those what have a boat you'd thought the other trolls had set up as a glubbin joke, Rainbow Warrior indeed--and some of those humans tend to be all gracious like. 

You're used to being alone, more so now than ever. But old habits of wanting attention, of wanting to be seen as the big fuckin deal you are--those die hard, and you guess it's only troll nature besides. You have to admit, most of the troubles you've got, you'd also have on Alternia. No quadrants, fair few friends, feelin a fair bit alienated--you'd be swimming in that same ocean on any planet. May as well be here. 

Near as you can tell, one of the biggest inconveniences about Earth is--with you more isolated than you'd been in your grubhood hive, with the tide controlled by a solitary moon, and with perigees being nothing more than a footnote in a Troll Culture textbook--you now have the shittiest concept of time. 

Days get long and short again, packs of fish and sea mammals come and go in those cycles humans call years. But years are so sodding short compared to a proper sweep; especially for you, it isn't as if there's any much bother to count. There's books enough to read, and Fef's aging just as slow as you, and you don't hear regular like from many other trolls. 

Which is your excuse for why it's such a glubbing shock to see Kar. 

It ain't often he makes this journey, long as it is, and over the sweeps you've given up trying to settle him in any sort of quadrant when he does come by. 

You've also given up trying to figure why the hell he shows up in the first place, grumbling and cursing and carrying on the whole way like he must. Whatever it is, now and then you get a letter--despite the usual troll aversion toward mail, you're far enough off the metaphorical human grid to only have the option of satellite phone, but you only care enough to maintain a simple radio for scaring off boats--that's seventy percent "fuck" and thirty percent demands on your time. Kar always sets the date, and he never waits around for you to argue. By the time you get the letter, he's inevitably halfway to your door. And you know if you swam for it, it'd just be holy hell. 

So every time, you complain to your porch and the shoreline and your dock and your boat and the water, and every time it does a fat load of glubbin good. 

At least the spray of the sea is always welcome against your fins, though you would prefer fuckin anything to riding through a rock-strewn international waterway to pick an ornery landlubber up from an aerodrome. Leastways this time he deigned to fly in as far as Stewart. More expensive for him, but not as far to go for you. 

You're full certain he decided to part with his precious fuckin American Earth dollars more for his own convenience than yours. Last time--however long ago that was--he'd spent the entire journey on your boat all complaints about you trying to get him drowned. 

The seaplanes aren't so strange to you, now. Trolls never had much call for the like, at least not in your time, what with the whole fuckin evolved society and space travel and all. Though you and most the other kids would have preferred rebooting in a universe with a few fuckin pairs of rocket shoes, the game left nothing in technological advancement. Point of fact, from what the human players had said, this planet was even further back in that respect than whatever old-Earth was like for the most of them. Given the backwater fuckin regression of this place, you'd figured you'd all be glubbin millionaires by now, with what you all having some advanced fuckin technical knowledge.

But it turned out very few of you had any sort of knack for that sorta shit at all. It was pretty much Sol and Eq and Dirk and Eq's skeezy fuckin horsekin ectosibling making fat millions for sweeps while the rest of you chumps just tried to figure out life without coddamn dream bubbles. You tend to think you're big fuckin shit with your ship's radio and your house's fairly decent state of repair, but to be honest basic glubbin ship maintenance is about as advanced as your technical know-how gets. You suspect the operation of something as primitive as a seaplane would even be beyond you. 

You're just lucky you ain't so close to anyone as to ever have to admit it. 

There's three planes in dock, but the lot of them are nearly always there, owned by humans in town. Seems Kar's still up in the sky making some human's life a right misery. He's still not forgiven the universe for not getting to fly in the game, but sick as he looks every time you've seen him fresh off a plane, you'd consider it a mercy. 

You don't think much of the few humans you see milling about, staying to yourself at the end of the docks. Some folk up in these parts are downright hostile to any sort of troll, but you've been here long enough that the locals consider you a curiosity at worst. Certainly you've been living here enough sweeps to prove you ain't some lowblood fixing to take a job from fuckin humankind, so no one ever pays you mind, leastways in town. That suits you fine. 

It's maybe two hours before you first hear the plane; just long enough for you to start feelin a bit tetchy about how long you've been stuck out on a sodding dock. Losing all track of time is one thing when you're counting Earth-years, but counting hours when it's this fuckin short stack of assholes making you wait, you get right glubbin annoyed. You got loads better things you could be doing than waiting about for some mutant to get his thumb out of his chute and fuckin show up, and you are ready and willing to tell him as much. The plane banks lower and lower, knocking against some trees, and you think _good_. 

The plane makes an awful sort of ruckus as it lands, scaring off all manner of featherbeasts. They just as soon flap on back and land again, cawing and generally carrying on, and it's out of that din you first hear Kar. 

"What the fuck was that, you shit-for-nuts? Have you ever landed one of these fucking goddamn death traps--" 

It's an unusually mellow sort of diatribe, at least for Kar. You smirk and walk closer, coming around from the pilot's side. You can hear him stumble out of the cockpit to finish his verbal assault on the pilot and the plane and the human species in general, and you step in before he can get himself shot. Humans are more decently violent than what you'd figure from looking at their soft fuckin mammalian ways, and you don't picture Kar came out all this far just to get a new hole in his head. 

"Jegus Kar lay off wwhy don't you," you call out, more for your sake than the pilot's. There ain't so many of them that you can be pissing them off for just any little thing, if you want any deliveries from the mainland to show up. "You're right enough, you sad sack a land lovvin piss." 

The pilot's stepped out by now, and thankfully he's got all his limbs and seems amused enough. Chances are he's suffered the indignity of ferrying Kar along before. It's difficult to tell, on account of how similar humans all look. 

"Figured he was your guest," the human says, and you agree that Kar's a right mess and more trouble than whatever he paid in fare. Flattering humans doesn't hurt any, you've learned. At least this time the human doesn't look all that put out, and you don't imagine you'll have too many fuckin waves to smooth over.

And it's a glubbin good thing, because when Kar rounds the body of the plane to come at you all Alternian curses, you're not able to pay attention to much of anything else.

Your first thought is maybe he'd got himself sick. But Kar ain't the type to let anything major go without sending an all-points bulletin to every coddamn person he's met. The pilot says some offhand remark about Kar being your something--some human word for one of their unnatural relations--and Kar starts yowling about that, too. 

You're stuck staring at him, wondering how long it's been since he was last here. Sweeps, certainly, but--

"Oh for bulgesucking sake, you backwater eelfucking asshole," he spits, only half in Alternian. For sweeps, he's had a shitty fuckin habit of mixing English in alongside Alternian, and now ain't any different. "Fucking quit staring at me like I'm the second fucking coming of Troll Jegus." 

"Wwell, technical speaking..." you start, just to piss him off further. And sure enough, he starts in on another barrage of interplanetary profanity, he starts reaching for a sickle that ain't even there. 

He's much the same as ever you've known him, all condensed fuckin fury. 

It makes it all the more troubling, that he looks so changed. 

If anything, he's even shorter, a fact you're gonna have to remember to rub in his fuckin land-licker face, as it's got to irritate the piss outta him. He's also not moving as spry as he once did, taking his glubbin time to pick up his luggage and glaring at you in such manner that you go on and take the most of it yourself. The bags under his eyes seem even more pronounced, if such was even possible. 

But most surprising is the state of his hair--coarse gray through and through, that peculiar sorta slate color you've only ever seen in photos and schoolfeeds. You lot ain't the oldest trolls stuck on this planet, but you've never been the most social of sorts and there's no one else but young warmbloods up in these parts besides. 

It's a shock to see on a troll at all, much less one hatched the same fuckin sweep as you. 

Staring at his hair is also a rightful excuse to ogle his pathetic little horns. They've always been a fair disgrace to trollkind anyhow--like Kar himself--and now they've turned the dusky nearly-solid vermillion of a troll sweeps beyond his last molt. Same as his hair, it's something you haven't ever seen outside a troll documentary. 

"The fuck is your problem, roeflap," he hisses out, entirely in Alternian. You give the pilot the absent sort a nod that passes well enough for greeting or dismissing with humans, and start heading to the boat. 

"There's no glubbin problem," you say, switching to Alternian yourself. The clicks come out heavy and over-accented.

He growls a little, clearly skeptical. 

"You're a right fuckin sight, as evver," you add. "An maybe I'm just hopin you're civvil enough not to vvomit on my glubbin ship." 

Throwing his bag in the back, he laughs. It's dry, and his voice never reached anywhere near the proper fuckin register of a decently blooded troll. 

"It's a boat, fuckface," he says. 

It's a familiar enough line, and right now you're right thankful for this stupid fuckin script you've formed with him. It doesn't take much thinkpan to throw out your line as you board. 

"Wwhy Kar I think you're comin on a touch strong in your old age--" 

"Ha fucking ha," he replies. Exactly the same fuckin joke you've been making every fuckin time you've seen him, and it's exactly the same interruption he's always made. 

You watch as he huddles in the passenger seat, tugging his coat collar up against the wind. 

He glares up at you. "Try not to get me drowned," he says. 

He's said it before, too. Last time, you remarked something clever on how it'd be a glubbin mercy and how land dwellers ain't got too long to live, anyhow. 

This time, though, you're silent as them dark spaces of ocean Fef's always swimming. You rev up the boat's engine. Kar's apparently wore out his supply of cursing, and he's sitting just as quiet as you. The ride ain't long, but it's enough to be painful for all the silence. 

Thankfully, it's also just long enough for Kar replenish his anger reserves and start grumbling on about you: how you never got around to putting in a heater, or having any blankets about, and how you're just generally a fuckin iceblooded psychopath all bent on getting him killed in the least pleasant of fashions. Even a goddamn shipwreck would be more pleasant, Eridan; why don't you just fucking rip my bulge out and feed it to a shark, Eridan. His voice is more rough than what you remember, but he harps on sure as he ever did, and you're near enough to shoving him off a plank as ever you were. 

By the time the dock's in view, you're at least accustomed enough to his odd hair and horns; and you're at least old enough now to not take much account of how much his words sound a proper caliginous sort of come on. While you're tethering up the boat, Kar's making his escape, halfway up the dock by the time you've finished. 

Last time he was here, he was up on the shore by the time you were done with the glubbin boat. You don't picture where you've been getting much slower. You try and calculate how fuckin long it's been since he's made this journey. 

Watching him out the corner of your eye, you're still half-wondering if he's brought some sort of troll plague from the Outside. 

He's only taken one of his bags, you notice well enough, and he turns back and glares at you when he realizes you're watching. 

"Jegus fuck," he says, "what is it _now_?" 

"Nofin," you growl back. He's doesn't even so much as flinch at the full-grown sea dweller timber of your voice, he's such a sorry fuckin excuse of a troll. You grab at his bag. "There ain't alwways a fuckin issue, you pitiful bilgesuckin shit." 

Kar smirks, walking slow up the dock beside you. "God, can you be any more fucking obvious, Ampora?" 

You knock the bag against his leg, a little gentler than you'd usually do. 

"Yeah wwell," you say, which is pitiful fuckin defense, you're full aware. You just can't think of anything else to say. 

He opens the door to the cabin. You haven't locked it since you moved here. Most folks know well enough to leave a sea troll alone. 

Dropping his bag in your entryway, Kar stalks in and glances about with his manner of constant suspicion. He's bored of that quick--you haven't changed anything much in your cabin for sweeps upon sweeps--and he turns around and stares at you with his freakish eyes. 

"Look, Eridan," he starts, and while you aren't exactly keen on anything that starts in such a manner--most of it ends with how you're a glubbin mess, too fuckin much trouble, even for a troll--you let him carry on. "I don't want you feeling sorry for me." 

You put his bag down. Glubbin asshole. It's a fuckin wonder he's here in the first place, if he's still gonna be on about all your old shitty attempts at quadrant-filling. 

"Fuck Kar I wouldn't be coddamn red for--" 

"Eridan," he snaps. You can't look at him full-on, annoyed at your own outburst. "You know I fucking meant it platonically." 

Kar's right, you do know it well enough. He gives you a rueful sort of grin, and you're near to shooshing him something fierce, an old and lonely sort of instinct. 

You've never shooshed a troll in your fuckin life. 

Kar knows it, too, which makes it a fucksight more embarrassing. While you're still wondering on how fuckin pathetic you are yourself, he's invading your house and getting comfortable. His baggage is all littered in your entryway, and he's sprawling out on your couch. 

Small a troll as he is, he should take little space at all. There was a fuckin time where he was so uptight that he'd hunch up against one armrest or another, compact as physically possible. 

How many sweeps are you lot now, you wonder, that he's so fuckin sure of his self that he takes up your couch entire. You try not to appear too over concerned on account of Kar's appearance or his manner, ignoring him to stalk toward your kitchen. 

"Wwant a drink I fuckin assume," you say, and his stupid blunt-toothed grin is all the answer you're like to get. 

Might as well act like this is any of Kar's other visits, you think. Like Fef, he'd taken you up as some sorta charity case ages back, coming by every couple sweeps. Early on, you'd resented it enough to attempt strifing with him anytime he got it in his sorry land-lubbing thinkpan to come by; but a couple sweeps of Fef needling you and the frankly embarrassing manner in which Kar'd shoosh you into a fuckin corner every time you'd make to kick his glubbin ass had you let off with the protests. Kar enjoys human drink--he's the only troll of your continued acquaintance who is kind enough to be like-minded as you on the matter--so you have to admit it's sort of a pleasure to mix him a hideous strong gin and mostly more gin. 

You also don't mind watching him get halfway to coughing it all over your hive before he mans up and swallows it back with nothing more than a curse regarding the nature of your upbringing. 

"Eh, and your lusus as wwell," you reply, offhand, trying to play that you're paying more attention to your fuckin drink than the ruddy flush he's got all over after suffering down straight liquor. Even if he's got mutant bilge for blood and is more than three-quarters in the grave, you've got excuses, you think. 

You ain't been pailed in sweeps. 

Still, doesn't mean you gotta be too fuckin outright about it. You ain't exactly _desperate_ ; you've got oceans more restraint than the impulsive fuckin wriggler you were once. Putting your drink back like it ain't nothing more than water, you tell him he's got a weak fuckin constitution; that he's a cull-worthy landgrub what can't handle a single bulgesuckin drink. 

"Are you volunteering?" he asks, and you reckon--way he looks now, and how trolls what made it long enough to look that way would eventually be culled for it in sensible Alternian culture--anybody would cough at that sorta comment.

"Wwell--" you start.

"Jegus, Eridan," he interrupts again, "like I would be desperate enough to give _you_ the pleasure. If someone needed a clean fucking cull, you'd be the last troll on any pandamaged asshole's list."

"Wwhat the fuck is that supposed to mean?" You may be a little out of practice, sure. Seemed more trouble than it was worth, trying to off a species as weak as humans, and until the last couple sweeps there weren't any trolls _to_ cull round your part. But it isn't pan surgery. 

Kar just laughs, the finless ass he is, and says it means he isn't on the market. That were he to be looking to get culled, he knows most your practice as far as culling goes was on bigger and dumber targets. 

Lusii, you're certain he means. You're tempted to accuse him of slandering Kan. You're tempted, also, to point out you've near the kill rate of his worthless fuckin moirail and it wasn't your fault some of what you tried to off was undead. But there's some shit even you won't go as far as saying. 

You let it go, despite whatever your proper instincts might be in regards to schooling Kar in how perfectly adept you are at culling. Pouring yourself a second drink, you finally come around to sit, perching uncomfortably on your shitty armchair. You'd sooner sit on the sofa, which has the benefit of decent upholstery and the slightly higher probability of getting to feel Kar up, but you're trying not to seem too desperate too early on. 

From his expression, Kar's on to you, and he's amused besides. You bare your teeth at him and get to trying to match him for drink. Your metabolism used to be slower than his, but sweeps ago he started slowing down. 

It's really no fuckin wonder he looks like this now, you think. You've had sweeps on sweeps of warning. 

As much as a shock as his appearance is anyway, it still isn't enough of one that you aren't just waiting for enough time to pass without any talk of his imminent fuckin demise before you make a move. 

This isn't anywhere near the first you two have pailed. And it's not as if Kar is exactly in it for any sort of romance where you're concerned, either. You figure a good two minutes of corpse-free conversation should be more than sufficient. And if it's two minutes of awkward fuckin silence, not your problem--Kar can spew whatever updates he likes on the rest of the fruity fuckin asshole rumpuses. You've got nothing more to tell than how much more civilized it is out here, where no one is stupid enough to stay through the endless frozen nights, aside from you. 

Kar's satisfied enough, it seems, to keep his windhole shut for fuckin once. You're half to making your sweet opening line--even if it's only been like fifty seconds maybe, but it seemed a decent enough span after all--when he leans forward to put his glass down. Score, you're thinking. He's putting aside the distractions, and you open your mouth to deliver your sweet fuckin line when he starts talking. 

"So," he says, conversational as anything, "you didn't come to the funeral." 

Coddamn it, you think. May as well have said it aloud, if Kar's aggravating fuckin half-smile is anything to go by. It figures he'd have to go and bring this shit up. 

Two corpse-free minutes was, you suppose, a little much to hope from any of the trolls you know.

"That's because it was a glubbin travvesty, and you knoww it," you say.

It wasn't as if you didn't get a fuckin invitation, no matter what you'd done back on the meteor. It was also apparent from what Fef said that aside from you personally every one of you assholes were there, humans included. 

It was also apparent that Fef thought you were a big fuckin disappointment for being the only one to miss out. She wouldn't accept the facts of the fuckin matter, which you present again for Kar's sake. 

A funeral. For a troll. 

You never heard of such a fuckin disgrace, and leastways you figured that fuckin musclebeast-dick-for-brains woulda said some shit about how full fuckin improper it was, even if it meant he was speaking up for some lowblood freak. 

You're expecting Kar to act like Fef and call you out for disparaging one of your fuckin fallen, even if you lot should be beyond used to death by now in your humble opinion. You're expecting him to at least carp at you for never leaving this icy douche of a state. 

"That's a pretty fucking decent thing for you to say. And for a guy who had--what was it--blood the complement of yours?" Kar offers, instead. "Even I have to admit it was really too bad you blew it with him. Out of everyone you managed to completely fuck up all possibility of ever having relations with--and by that I mean every goddamn individual who suffered the taintchafing misfortune of having to hear you speak--you really did have some halfway decent lines with him." 

"Fuck off," you say. Uncreative and reflexive, that's you, and you try to hide your annoyance in your drink. 

It's still a sore spot. Like all the others. 

Even now, you come across too desperate to even work a glubbin cross-ocean internet relationship with one of the other sea trolls sorry enough to have found themselves in an Earth ocean. But you guess it's particularly twisting the sickle to have an independent fuckin third party well-versed on the nature of troll romance pointing out that maybe you _had_ something with Sol, something you fucked up entire. 

Not as if it's anything you can fuckin correct, now.

"Just saying. Whatever Feferi might have told you, it was a clusterfuck of the highest pancrushing degree. You know it was only the humans who were forcing the fucking issue, even if he only ever got along with two of them. Typical," Kar says, and despite yourself, you gotta smirk.

When Sol got sick the way he did, you guess that wasn't any surprise. Like Kar, you'd always thought Sol was just fated to the short end of the genetic stick. All the same, you think you'd all got so accustomed to the concept of Aradia dying first that--much as you'd all seen Sol die in the past--it came as a shock to everyone when he finally did go belly-up for the last time. 

"Anyway, I think he probably would have thought we were huge nooksnorting idiots for going along with the entire charade. Gog, can you imagine his face if he saw everyone sobbing over his crusty fucking corpse? At least we convinced the humans to set him on fire, not stick him in a box like some painting of a hideously double-bulged musclebeast," Kar continues on, "I guess they have some sort of ridiculous fucking _thing_ against letting rotting skinhusks lie, which is just asshole caliber behavior, especially since he had the sense to die in a perfectly tidy fucking manner in his own gogdamn recuperacoon." 

This is all news to you, of course; save for the fact that Sol was the only one of you to have enough money and technical sense to even fuckin _own_ a recuperacoon. 

You would have admitted to being at least half-curious about what had happened, but Sol ain't exactly a topic you and Fef were likely to discuss. What you knew could be put on the back of one glubbin halfhearted invitation to some fucked-up human-run corpse party, along with whatever Fef had mentioned offhand before Sol croaked. 

Some sort of fuckin thing with his psionics, maybe. Who knew. There was just some sorta damage fuckin up the conduction in his bloodpusher, from what you remember Fef saying. Troll medicine hadn't ever been tested out properly for anything below a greenblood, but Sol'd been on some mix of troll and human drugs for sweeps, right up until he finally just shorted out. 

Somehow, it's disappointing, knowing that was how he'd gone. You gather humans prefer that sorta thing, but a land-stuck soft-bodied cosmic fuckin joke of a species _would_ prefer someone's vascular organ just ticking down a gradual decline. Not much you can do about it now, you remind yourself once again. 

But you keep thinking about it. 

Even someone with a fuckin topping for ground moobeast rounds running through his veins deserved better, and you'd have been over fuckin joyed to have the honor a slitting him open clean. 

If trolls are cheerful to go along with the softpanned human practice of burning and burying the dead, you can't imagine that's an option that's even still about. As many humans as Kar's close with, he isn't exactly probable to take his kismesis up on that tradition. But far as you're concerned, it's the more decent way a going about things, and you're sure a good percent of Kar's intolerable fuckin movies have that shitty plot regarding an older troll out to fill their spades just so as to not die in an insufferable manner. 

"--And then we had to have a fucking _wake_ , which thank gog had less to do with deathships like your fucking heap of dross and rusty nails, and more to do with drinking a lot of human alcohol, which he would have at least found gogdamn _laughable_. I guess that was the whole fucking point, who the fuck knows; the Brothers Douche came up with that shit. I guess it was some sort of fucking consolation prize for not getting to have some fucked-up procession involving a grubsucking _marching band_. Although Sollux _would_ have loved knowing that the rest of us were suffering broad fucking daylight and spongeclot-piercing human horn music. Migraines for everyone, that'd be a perfect send-off for that freakjob nookstain wastechute-sucking--" 

"Jegus Kar hold up," you interrupt. Fuck, Kar's all but leaking his mutant tears all over your living room and this is all getting far too pale on his glubbin part. It's not like Kar hasn't a quadrant for this sort of shit, and it's not like you got any sort of practice with dealing with it, either. All you can think to do is reach over and put an awkward hand on his leg. He feels frail, near skeletal; surprising for as fuckin condensed a troll he was, once. 

"I don't," you start, but you're just trailing off again right away. Your voice feels rough and strange, like something is jammed in your windhole. 

Kar wipes at his face, a sharp, abrupt motion. "Yeah, fuck. Sorry," he says. You open your mouth to say something suitably witty to move this disastrous excuse for a conversation right the fuck along, but he interrupts before you can, already a fuckin sight more composed. 

"And don't fucking ruin this with some shitty comment about condiments. You fucking miss insulting him as much as I do, you aquatic bucketlicker, don't fucking deny it. You're right, though, it was a gogdamn travesty. I think--fuck. I think he would have liked knowing someone was acting like a fucking troll about it." 

It's hard to look full-on at Kar, suddenly. You're stuck with a hand on his skinny fuckin leg, and you glare at the contrast of grays: his trousers and your skin. 

"And don't take this in the dramatic sea royalty fashion you take _fucking everything_ \--I'm not telling you you're not invited to my imminent husk fiesta--but fuck. If you want to sit this one out, too, I'd really fucking prefer it if they'd just leave me out on some--" 

"Kar, you glubbin havve," you break off, clearing your throat. What the fuck. 

"I mean I don't want it to sound like I'm not flattered, but isn't this a little… wwell. Pale-ish?" 

Really it's _more_ than a little pale of him. Maybe discussing funerary plans is something that, in all of paradox space, has been experienced by approximately zero trolls ever. But were it something trolls fuckin _did_ , you'd be pretty fuckin sure it was something you coddamn well discussed with your moirail, and you school Kar on the fact. 

He thanks you by shoving at your hand and rolling his eyes in a fashion that--in your humble opinion--is leagues more dramatic than any sort of action you've ever stooped to perform. "Okay, yeah Eridan, you caught me. Here I am, cheating on my moirail and throwing myself at the disgusting webbed lower extremities of your pale affections." 

"Really?"

" _No_! I'm not fucking cheating on Gamzee. I just have a justified fear of having my charred remains miraculously find their fucking way into a fucking bottle of carbonated vomit. I'm going to suffer as many conversations with complete bulge-wilting morons like my present company as it takes to guarantee that my human-style death party doesn't turn into some fucking carnival." 

"I thought you'd said he wwasn't glubbin on about all that anymore." 

"Maybe. Who the fuck knows, and even if he's not _now_ , once I start rearranging the deck of this mortal spring… Look. Just fucking make sure they set fire to me, okay? No clown bullshit, no theatrics, and no putting my ashy remains on any fucking in-hive fire receptacle frames," Kar says, glaring at you. 

It's evident he wants some sort a response. 

"Awwful picky about howw wwe sea to a corpse," you say.

"If I come back as some sort half-Faygo abomination of--" 

"Wwouldn't fuckin happen but fine okay. The humans can set fire to you right the fuck noww for all I give a glub, and I'll shake you out ovver the fuckin tundra myself."

"I was expecting burial by fucking sea." 

"Fuck no I ain't havvin your distasteful mutant ash all cloggin up my gills," you say, "but the rest of it, wwhatevver."

He's still having a stare-down like he's trying to trawl for fuckin lies, so you glare back and sneer enough to show off your fangs. 

"Cod Kar I fuckin promise okay. Not as if anyone's gonna fuckin listen to me but much as I'm able, I'll make sure no one fuckin has you stuffed an mounted." 

Blinking, he gives you a half-grin. "Okay," he says. "Thanks." 

Needy fuck, you think. At least you can glubbin get your move on already, now that he seems happy. 

"Noww howw about wwe get to makin shore at least one of us gets mounted."

Kar makes some sort of noise that's half coughing and half laughing before reaching over and stealing your drink. 

"That was an incredibly shitty line. Even for you," he says, knocking the remainder of your booze back. 

"Did it wwork?" you ask, hopeful. 

"Look at me, Eridan. I'm an old man. If we were back on a planet that wasn't made out of pantswetting clawsucking grubs, I'd already be sliced and fed to the maritime wolfbeasts. You seriously fucking think I can still get it up?" 

"Wwell," you say. Might as well venture an optimistic sorta guess. "Yes?" 

Kar snorts and looks away, so you talk fast. "An anywway it's not like it matters--wwell I'm shore it matters to _you_ \--but there's more than one wway to catch--"

"You finish your fucking Aqualad analogy--it's an earth sequentialized illustration never fucking mind, that's not the point--if you finish that bullshit sentence, It's over. I will have finally given up. You can die in peace, now, having succeeded in your fucking twenty-sweep-long campaign of incessant bulge-softening idiocy in making me finally take a vow of fucking celibacy." 

"Little pail-fillin betwween ol friends never counted against that, but far be it for me to get in the wway a time honored family tradition," you say, and when he goes red and starts spitting a wall of curses, you just cut in and keep talking. 

"Serious though Kar much as I'm not fond a settin em aside for your like, no fish puns. It's not fuckin important okay I'm still game for wwhatevver." 

"That's because you're fucking desperate. If it wasn't for me, you'd never get pailed. More importantly, though, what if _I'm_ not 'game for wwhatevver?'" he asks, gesturing out the enclosure talons.

You shrug. "Wweren't you staying a few nights? You'll be game for somefin evventually." 

Kar smirks and stands up. 

"Right," he says, "I'm using your ablution trap."

It's an argument that even you have given up on--the ancient ablution-trap-versus-shower debate--so you just sit there and start trying to figure out where all your entirely fail-proof plans to get Kar's clothes off went awry. 

You aren't watching him as he picks through his luggage and walks behind you, caught up as you are in such important matters of consideration. 

So it comes as a surprise when he grabs at your right horn, tugging hard enough to pull your head back. It's not painful, but it's enough of a shock that the only reason you're not attacking is because you've already been exposed to over twenty sweeps of Karkat Vantas's full fuckin audacity. He looks down at you from his negligible vantage point, and smirks. 

"But if you're feeling optimistic, I might find myself game enough to find that lumpy travesty you're passing off for a concupiscent couch, afterwards." 

You let go of his wrist, where you'd grabbed him out of instinct, and try not to look too fuckin eager. 

"Right, wwell. Maybe I'll sea you back there then," you say. 

"Maybe," he says, still smirking. Asshole doesn't even stop to look at his wrist, where your claws left a set of pinpricks, small and mutant-red. 

He just walks off. 

You listen to the water run for a few minutes before getting up, yourself.


	2. Chapter 2

Course, once you're in your respiteblock you're annoyed at your delay. There's too much to do before Kar is done with his _shower_ : you'd been trying not to look too hopeful about this, so of course your room is freezing and the concupiscent couch is even lumpier and more clawed-up than usual. Committed to a month of overages on your electric bill, you crank the heat all the way before dealing with the bed. 

Like most Earth trolls, you'd just been making do without sopor since finding your way on this backwater planet. The day terrors aren't as prominent here, and many trolls--particularly, so you've read, the Earth-hatched--seem to survive fair well without. 

You, of course, get to buy a new mattress every other sweep for as much as you've torn through your memories. Maybe it would have been advisable to have found a fresh one prior to having Kar over, but--well, you think. Ain't as if you won't be ruining it in a considerably more pleasant manner, anyway. You flip the mattress and remake the bed hurriedly, listening all the while to the hiss of the shower. 

When you're done, you stop for a moment, considering. 

Should you strip down? Should you turn down the lights? Should you turn on that hideous Earth music that Kar, for some fuckin reason well beyond all fuckin reason, seems to get all slicked up over? 

This is, as Kar is so coddamn fond of saying, stupid. 

In the end, the screech of the pipes as Kar cuts off the water makes you dive into action. You gotta do something, you figure, to tip the scales more in your favor. And it ain't like Kar is here for some redrom whaleshit, so you figure stripping down should be enough. 

Except it feels awkward being all laid out on top of the bed like something fresh-caught and waiting to be gutted, so you grab a robe last-minute like, and lean casual against the headboard. 

Which lasts all of two seconds before you're remembering Kar's comment from before. 

Not that you're likely to advertise the fact, but if there's one thing you got practice enough in, it's getting your nook stuffed without the presence of another bulge. Fuck messing around with quadrants and feelings and all that bilge-water, there's some right useful products out there, troll- and human-made both. You pull out the box you've got everything stowed in from under the bed, and your bucket for good measure. You've sat down next to them before you're thinking that it seems way too fuckin pathetic to be sitting next to not only a pail, but a _fuckin giant crate of autopailing devices_ , and you're only as far as shoving the bucket back when Kar opens the door. 

He's wrapped up in one of your other robes, presumptive fuckin ass. You're not so much bigger than him that it looks like a complete joke, but the sleeves still drape over his hands and he's covered full to his feet. He's still rubbing at his hair. You're about to tell him off for tossing wet towels on your respiteblock floor--might not be the best of varnish but shit's still hardwood--but it's too late, he's already spotted your bed fulla shame and he's already getting fuckin cozy with a box full of pseudobulge. 

"Holy nubsucking shit. Does this actually fucking work?" he asks. Of course, he's pulled the sticky plastic piece of neon-violet trash some human thought resembled a seadweller bulge from the bottom of the crate. 

"Fuck no look at it. Fuckin awwful." Using it--a mistake you've made all of once--is like trying to shove a particularly reluctant jellyfish up your nook, but you're not about to say as much given that Kar's made similar comparisons to certain portions of your anatomy. 

He laughs, clearly delighted with your suffering. Not like that's anything new. 

"Oh my god," he says, slapping it against his hand in a right unsettling fashion. "Oh my fucking god how have I not seen this, how have you been holding out on this entire fucking glorious shameparade." 

"Because it's a fuckin piece a human garbage an I got my dignity that's fuckin wwhy," you say. You're already flushing on account of the intolerable heat you gotta keep your cabin at for Kar, and you breathe a sigh of relief when he finally puts it back down. 

"Well, thanks for keeping it in your special NSFW edition of Troll Hoarders," he says, pawing through the rest of your shit like he's the fuckin Knight of Oscillating Silicone Dick. You consider stopping him, but it would interfere with the suave air you've put on concerning this whole affair. "You made an old man very happy." 

"You're the same fuckin age as me Kar." 

He looks back up at you, and you shrink back from the intensity of his glare. His stark red eyes are flanked with age fissures. Even his eyebrows are completely slate-colored, now; not a sign of black in them. "Sorry if I don't exactly take any fucking consolation from that fact," he says. 

"Wwell you don't havve to," you say, uncomfortable. 

He's still glaring at you with one hand jammed in a bin of dildos, which is nowhere near the strangest thing you've seen in your various lifetimes, but is admittedly the most unusual experience of this particular sweep. 

"Cod Kar all I'm sayin is that if you don't wwant anyone bein sorry for you maybe you should stop bein all sorry for yourself." It'll just annoy Kar, yeah. But aside from griping at him you're not sure what else to do. It's not like he'd accept any other sorta treatment from the likes of you, after all. 

"Yeah, well--" he starts, before conveniently getting distracted by the crate between you. "Oh my god. Well, I'm sort of seeing where you're right, anyway, if you have one of these. What the fuck Eridan is this really a--"

"It's a human thing," you blurt. Your neck-fins feel hot, and now you're wishing he'd just keep to the fuckin poor-me-I'm-almost-a-corpse shtick. "It's not the exactly the same okay, it's designed to give shocks that wwon't even kill a glubbin human." 

"Yeah, totally not an electric bulge enticer, not even close. Jegus fuck. The attachment looks _exactly the same_. How the fuck do humans use it?" 

"Wwell, the attachment might be kinda after-market. Look okay can wwe, uh..." 

Kar grins, but thank cod he also puts the fuckin TENS unit down. 

"Eridan," he starts. Now that he's not holding any particularly shameful materials of your possession, you might curse a little at hearing his flat serious tone of voice. At this rate, it's gonna be a bulgeloving miracle you ever get laid. 

He glares at you, but fuck if you care. He calls you melodramatic; he's the one paddling from Pitiful Cullbait Island and back every two glubbin words. 

"Shut your fucking--"

"I didn't say anyfin. You're the one all harpsealin' on," you say. If you're not getting pailed, you're at least going to get the marginal pleasure of irritating Kar with shitty puns. He makes an expression like what you said was the cause of physical pain, and you're fuckin glad for it. He crosses his skinny arms, all petulant-seeming; makes some irritated grumbling sound and won't meet your eyes. 

"I just don't want you to be disappointed," he says. 

He's so damn dejected, it's comical. 

Pushing aside the crate of fuckin embarrassment just enough to do so, you lean over Kar. He growls a little, mostly out of being startled, you figure. You ignore it. 

"Kar," you start, risking your hide to go in to try for some flushed sort of contact, maybe to just bite at his neck a bit. Course, Kar puts his hands up to push against you and keep his distance, so you're forced to just try and talk him around to seeing his way around getting pailed sometime before his imminent fuckin corpse party. "Come on I said it before an I meant it okay, I'm game for fuckin wwhatevver. Wwe're talkin about me an far as what anyone wwould be sayin I'd pail my own coddamn lusus, so not thinkin you got a wwhole lot a room for concern." 

Kar huffs out a breath, like the start of a laugh or a sigh. "You're saying I shouldn't be concerned about my barely-animated husk simply because you're willing to stick your bulge in anything with a pulse." 

"Some things wwithout as wwell if you ask your fuckin friends," you say. "An fuck no havve all the issues you fuckin wwant it's not like you can operate your thoracic oxygen exchange sacks wwithout gettin all hateful wwith your glubbin self. Just don't get it in your sorry thinkpan that any a it fuckin matters to me." 

"Well, after a compliment as fucking stellar and bloodpusher-stopping as that, we better bust out the buckets right now." 

"Serious--"

"Fuck, no," he says, but at least it's with a smirk instead of that stupid downcast expression he gets all too often. Up this close, the way it makes the lines on his face go sharp is stunning. 

His hands skim outward from where they're still pressed up against your chest, keeping that distance between you. The fabric of your robe bunches under his small warm hands, and even that little contact leaves you flustered. Briefly, he's stroking dry-hot against your skin, before he's shoving at the robe to get it off your shoulders. 

"But you talked me into it anyway, with your superior fucking charm. Come on, take it off. At least we all know what sort of bulge-withering disappointment is awaiting us here." 

You'd argue in an effort to make Kar feel a little sorry for making such a blatantly false accusation, but there's already been more than enough sitting around and talking about getting pailed and not near enough getting on with it. So you go on and untie the robe, not saying much of anything asides from a short commentary on how at least you're not a fuckin asshole bulgetease content to paw through a man's personal glubbin possessions only to act all fuckin cagey after. 

Though it's not like you have much call to show it off, you aren't exactly shy with your body. It's a fuckin fine example of a properly evolved troll in what is a couple of sweeps away from his prime, and though you've eased off on some of the more interesting manners of staying fit--one-armed riflery, seahorse-riding--you actually do have excuse to swim for a change. 

It can be awkward stripping down for the first time in front of a land-troll, on account of the fact that there's a fair amount of structural difference and there's not a great deal of sea trolls in porn or anything. At least there wasn't on Alternia, anyway. Maybe Earth land-trolls know all about sea troll anatomy; maybe the handful of violet-bloods besides you that went Earthside did so for some burgeoning aquarotica industry. You don't fucking know, and more to the point, it isn't important. Kar's seen you often enough to not require a fuckin lecture regarding gills and fins and the like, and from how he reaches out right off to feel up one of your lumbar fins, he's still agreeable enough with the matter, whatever he says. He scratches roughly down over the prominent spines along your fin, then along your back till he's at your gills and you grab impatiently at his arm. 

"Fucksake Kar," you hiss. Your skin throbs where he's left his mark, a set of four lines you know will still be violet next evening. He just bares his fangs in another fuckin grin and looks pointedly downward. 

"Just trying to get you halfway as worked up as you were fucking pretending to be," he says. 

It's true your bulge is still retracted, the slit of your seedflap narrowed. It takes seadwellers a little longer to warm up for that part, which is--as far as your concerned--the more civilized way of going about things. But you're still fuckin engorged, your skin flushed deep violet with arousal. Your nook feels loose and open, your inner thighs already slick with the first trickles of genetic material. 

You're fucking worked up, alright, you tell Kar. And you'd be more so if he'd fucking put it through his thinkpan that he should really be getting rid of the glubbin robe. 

Kar pulls back, so you let go of his forearm. You're not quite desperate enough to force the issue, even if he does go all melodramatic. You can't quite tell if he's pulling away to strip or to be surly.

Either way, you figure it's a good time to sit back, and maybe you sprawl your legs purposefully while doing so. The crate's at least within easy reach, if whatever you do isn't enough to entice Kar. He watches you, seemingly wary, but you ignore it. Not like you're doing anything more threatening than leaning against one arm while the other hand maybe kind of rests in an enticing manner on one thigh. 

He all but glares at your hand, but fuck if you care; your let your fingers spread just high enough on the inside of your thigh to get them damp. Kar's face goes pink. 

Good, you think. Maybe he'll get on board yet. 

Looking at your hands the whole time, he says he's going to need a little more time to get rid of the robe yet. 

Suit yourself, you nearly say, but before you can Kar's leaning forward and shoving the sleeves up past his elbows. 

"That's not a fucking invitation to fondle yourself, though," he says. His hands grip tight on your legs, dry and feverish. 

"Wwhat you gonna do it for me?" you ask, and you wish it didn't come out sounding so desperate.

In answer, he shifts forward to sit between your legs. "Have to make sure there's some bulge to fucking wither, don't I?" 

You're about to protest--despite what he's glubbin on about and despite the baseline fuckin inferiority of land-based anatomy, Kar's never been an unpleasant sight--but Kar's already sitting there with his fuckin sleeves rolled up, reaching over to push your own hand out of his way. 

Of course, you let him. 

It's ridiculous that he's holding out with his whole self-loathing modesty gimmick, but even you can't deny that there's something appealing about him like this, studious and intent like he's not done this hundreds of times. And as far as you're concerned, Kar's always been fuckin amazing at this--and not just sex in general, but _this_ , working someone with hands alone. Your own hands tense against the sheets, anticipating. 

His touch is rough on the eel-skin smooth curve of your inner thighs. "Kar," you can't help saying. He's so fucking warm and dry, and he's about four inches away from your nook and all you can think of is how his fingers feel hooked deep in you. 

Kar laughs. "You really are desperate." 

"Fuck you fuckin nooktease," you say, your voice coming out strained. 

His hands keeps sliding up. "I'm shoving my hand in your freakshow aquatic business, and you're calling me a nooktease," he says. You're barely capable of paying attention, transfixed as you are by watching him. "How long has it been since you've filled a pail with anything else than your own fucking glacial material?" 

You know your face is going full violet at that. Fuck this asshole, you think; if he weren't so glubbin good at this, you'd strife some sense into him right here and now. 

"Okay, maybe that was a fucking asshole thing to say," he admits before you can say anything else, and his hand pauses.

"Yeah it glubbin wwas you--" 

Your voice breaks off in an undignified sort of sound. Jegus. Of course Kar would be waiting for the second you started fuckin complaining to just go and slide his hands up so he's pressing firm and unyielding at the join of your thigh, forcing your legs further apart. The way he's got his hands, it's putting pressure on the far edges of your still-contained bulge, and you don't know if you want him to stop or to move up, to push harder. You feel exposed, restless and sore with need. 

"I didn't say it to be insulting," he says, and all you can think is _why is he still talking_. 

"Guess there's a first time for everythin an all." 

"Hah, hah." He does push in harder then, just the fingertips over where your bulge is straining your skin. You claw at the bedding. The sensation's like prodding a bruise, but amplified; sore and irritating and your nook is fucking soaked. "I just wanted to make a fucking point. You looked like you were going to say something about how great I am at this--" 

"Jegus fuck," you whine. He's given up on the fucking teasing portion of the evening and is just palming you directly, the heel of his hand up against your narrowed seedflap and his fingers spread out over the opening of your nook. "And that'd be a glubbin issue wwhy?" you pant. You are trying not to grind up against him, even if any effort to pretend you're not begging for it is a lost cause. 

"It's a glubbing issue because," he says, rocking his hand slow back and forth, encouraging the slit protecting your bulge to open, "you don't have any basis of fucking comparison." 

You don't know how he thinks you're able to pay any attention whatsoever to what he's saying. "First you're throwwin shitty asshole insults at me an now it's shitty fuckin puns," you say. He's still rubbing steadily against your swelling bulge, and you're near to squirming away. The grinding pressure isn't enough to get your bulge unsheathed, but it is enough to be painful. 

You tilt your hips up to thrust harder against his hand. 

"Gog," he says, under his breath like he's trying to hide how much he gets in to this. You sit up just enough to reach over and push his hair back, to let your hand brush over against one of his little horns. 

"Kar it doesn't fuckin matter that I ain't got any sort a consistent basis a comparison, you're still fair decent at this sort a thing an maybe I just don't sea where it's wworth goin around lookin for a passable lay when one swwims by evvery couple a swweeps anyhoww," you say. You are full aware you're rambling. 

He looks like he's not sold on the compliment, or like maybe he doesn't consider it a compliment at all. You sigh and pet light between his horns. You don't want to shift things pale, but hopefully there's a low enough chance of that with his hand on your bulge. 

"Wwhat else you wwant me to say? I wwant you, okay. Evven if you're all fuckin decrepit an a mess entire, an evven if you nevver figure out wwhen to fuckin shut your wwindhole. You're okay at pailin, your body ain't hideous, an it ain't alwways torture havvin to listen to you." 

It's looking like he's maybe coming around, so you blurt out the rest before he interrupts again.

"Take the robe off next swweep all I care. Just stop clammin up an sellin yourself as bein so glubbin awwful. You knoww I don't pity you like that anywway," you finish. 

You hadn't really noticed you'd been leaning in toward him while delivering this lecture, not until you were done. But, since you're close enough anyway, you figure you'll just try for a kiss for good measure anyway. Hell, maybe he'll fight you off and this will at least swing to blackrom and it'll make Kar forget to be so codawful shy.

To your amazement, though, he allows for it. It means he lets up on your bulge a second, unfortunately, but at least it's to grip his claws against your side as he kisses you back. It's violent and quick, and you taste your own blood. Of course Kar's more careful around your teeth than you are. 

When he pulls away, he's blushing that bright mutant pink. 

"Fine," he grumbles. "No more attempts to schoolfeed you on basic gogdamn facts, and I'll even take off the fucking robe in the next hour, provided you're even remotely capable of getting that horrorshow bulge out in that amount of time. And don't say any fucking hoofbeastshit about 'bluh bluh it'll get out faster if you're naked bluh.' Maybe your prescription's out of date enough that you'd be turned on by _me_ , but if I took it off now I don't think I could concentrate on anything other than my own fucking issues."

"Fine," you agree. It's a fair enough concern, you figure. 

One of the great wonders of troll biology is that there's always a higher hatch rate of trolls with short life-spans than longer-lived trolls. Part of this is likely thanks to whatever the Mother Grub does with the slurry--you, like most trolls, prefer not to think about the particulars of that. But part of the hemospectrum's balance comes from this, from the inconvenient fact that the coldest-blooded trolls have the most ridiculously fuckin elaborate mating behaviors. 

Though you--and other sea trolls--survive well enough on dry land, technically speaking you're all supposed to be in the fuckin sea at some time. Enough days out of water, you're comfortable enough with the manner in which your skin dries out, but not all of your biology is so fuckin forgiving of any attempts to live entirely above water. 

You might be comfortable breathing without your gills for a sweep. What isn't so comfortable is the adaptation of having a bulge that'll only glubbin emerge if your skin is somewhere near the normal sea troll baseline of "disgusting amphibian slimefest," as Kar's called it in the past. 

In the past Kar's also presented the conceited fuckin opinion that--along with making certain trollkind isn't a pack of long-lived pail-happy violet-bloods--this is the reason for the general amount of bloodshed brought about by sea trolls. 

There's few enough of you that, statistically speaking, you'd have better odds fishing for a land troll, however inferior they may be. Even if you do pail another seadweller you'd best do it where the genetic material can actually remain in a bucket, so whatever you do, you're set for the ordeal of getting your bulge to cooperate on dry fuckin land. It's not like it's glubbin impossible to get pailed, but you can see where--particularly from where an ignorant land troll like fuckin Kar is standing--your anatomy seems to set you up for frustration and set the entire troll race up with a shameful lack of decent genetics in the slurry. 

You lay back, propped up on your elbows to watch, because even if Kar's making some generally unkind commentary watching him work is always an amazing fuckin sight. It'd be easier by far to just get him in the shower _with_ you--you've done that before despite the impossibility in finding an agreeable temperature--but, truth be told, you've always been keen on the amount of attention it takes to make this work on dry land. 

He starts out, thank cod, in a direct enough manner. He just gets his hands right back to pushing your thighs apart and goes right for your nook. His claws scratch against the delicate skin, and you growl and tense. You're more than strong enough to throw Kar off of you. He's fuckin soft enough he'd probably let up on you if you _asked_ , besides. But you're painful empty and already slick enough that you're on the verge of grabbing for your bucket, and even the sharp ache of Kar's talons against the walls of your nook is making you wet. 

It's only a few thrusts of those two fingers up your nook before you're asking in a complete dignified manner for his bulge, and Kar's looking full of himself. He pulls his hand back coated in violet, and even if you know full well his intent, you moan at the indecent shock of your own genetic material being smeared over your seedflap. 

This is often enough part of how you get yourself off. But, like most things in pailing, it's just going to be more intense with another troll--Kar in particular, with the glubbin aggressive manner he has--doing the act. He rubs it in against the narrow slit, his fingers grinding against you in small circles. This early on, the fluid is thick, more lubricant than material for a pail. Kar's soon enough sliding his fingers back for more.

Used to be, Kar would narrate every glubbin moment of this. Used to be, he'd also be naked and growly and impatient with his thick bulge writhing between you. But right now he's the Kar version of quiet, griping only every now and then about how cold your blood runs or how pushy he thinks you are, seemingly all hyper-focused on you given the presence of that fuckin robe. It's got you feeling a vague sort of uneasy, even as he has you dripping over his hands. Like he's thinking this is the last time you'll do this, or like he's thinking on just getting you off and glubbin off back home to the mainland for his human-style corpse party. It's irksome. 

He hates the journey up to your waters enough that he'd never make it twice in as many weeks, you know that much. But you still just want to rip your own fuckin robe to scraps, you want to drag him close and wrap around that surly heat till Kar resigns himself to the fact that you aren't letting him swim by with some dispassionate hoofbeast shit. 

He doesn't seem inclined to let up on you long enough for you to find the coordination to do so. He keeps alternating between your open nook at the tight slit of seedflap, and even if you could get used to that, it's not long before Kar's going all-out and thrusting one hand half up you while he strokes fast and rough over your bulge with the other. 

Your nook is painful full with his hand, the building pressure making you fuckin stupid. You're sweating and trying not to claw at the sheets or Kar, and you know you're just glubbin some utter embarrassment of mangled Alternian. Kar keeps up the rough treatment and under your own whining you hear him say something like, "come on, freezernook," and you do knee him away, then. Feeling your bulge emerge in a wet writhing mess of tentacles is a fuckin relief, near enough to orgasm on its own. What Kar'd been doing had been pleasant through a protective layer of skin. 

But a second of that treatment direct on your bulge is enough to have you absconding. 

"Fuckin wwatch it," you hiss, bringing your legs up and together and kicking Kar in the process. He just sits back on his heels, wiping his hands casually on your robe. He looks as fuckin smug as ever about these proceedings, and you glare at him even as your bulge is curling against itself and your thighs, seeking some less harsh manner of contact. 

"Don't act so fucking surprised," he says. He grips at one of your legs, tight around your calf so he's bruising a legfin. You feel like your bulge is going to fuckin crawl out of your body. "You know that happens, oh, _every time we do this_?"

"I'm not glubbin surprised I just had my bulge fuckin chafed an I mean in a literal sort a fashion. I'm due recompense," you say, easily resisting Kar's attempts to tug your leg back. 

"The nookstuffing fuck you're not--"

"I was delivvered a grievvous manner a injury so I havve demands what need to be met," you interrupt. At this point Kar's got an expression like he's trying to stay ornery when he's got every inclination to laugh. He's also putting more weight in to his efforts to get at your bulge--though Kar's forever making some insulting noise regarding it, you've always had the impression he's more keen on messes of violet tentacles than you are--so you sit up to hold your knees protectively against your chest. Your bulge traces sticky trails against your stomach. 

Kar huffs an impatient sigh, and he's all but rolling his eyes when he asks on the nature of your demands. 

"It's simple enough an you wwere gonna glubbin do it anywway," you say, "least you wwere if you meant to stick to your fuckin dramatic speech, wwhich I hope--"

"Ampora. Get to the point." 

"Wwell," you start. You've been alive long enough, now, to know a great deal more about not pressing your fuckin luck when you've rarely got any to begin with, and you can't help but go all hesitant. "Wwhat I mean is maybe since it's wwithin the coddam hour an all that, then maybe you could be ditchin the robe I mean really Kar a guy is due that much right."

When you glance back up at Kar, you can't say he looks so much reluctant as he does uncertain, and it gives you confidence enough. You uncurl from your huddled pose and get Kar to sit up next to you, face-to-face and straddling your legs. He goes without any complaint, which is shock enough, and lets you shove your hands down inside the robe same as he'd done to you earlier. His body is searing hot under your palms, the beat of his bloodpusher uncountably fast. 

"Bluh," he says. He's looking over your shoulder, and his face is near as red as his eyes. You let your hands rest on his shoulders--skin soft and loose over bone--and you wait for him to continue. "Whatever. It's not like there's--"

"Kar the self-pity is a glubbin ridiculous sort a routine an I wwanna knoww wwhat manner a things your quadrantmates havve been sayin so that you're in such a fuckin state."

"What?" It's at least got his attention. "No. You nookbrained imbecile, no one said a fucking thing, but you know they're sort of my _quadrantmates_ and they aren't pretentious appearance-obsessed bulgestains." 

Like your opinion glubbin matters, you think. You shrug. "Wwhatevver," you return. "You knoww I care more about gettin pailed than wwhat you glubbin look like you conceited fuckin ass." Pushing at the robe so it starts sliding off his shoulders, he's leaned against you close enough that you can't see much. You raise your eyebrows at him, and he sighs again, shrugging you off to untie the robe and shoving it off entirely. 

He's on you again so quick you don't get a chance to look at first, but you don't glubbin care. Kar is a condensed weight of fever-warm land troll, and up against your lap so your bulge is squirming between you. He makes a quiet noise that somehow conveys vague distaste and arousal both, his arms clenched tight around your back. You press your face against the curve of his neck, trying to level out your breath and making every effort not to grind yourself against him. 

For a moment, Kar seems content enough there, though you can't imagine the cold probing of your bulge to be all that pleasant for him. You're not in any rush, either--you'd like to get Kar a little wet before you're diving for a bucket--and, truth be told, you've missed Kar enough that just having him like this is plenty. You stroke over his back, your touch slow and curious where you feel the bones of his spine and pelvis, so much more prominent than when you saw him last. 

You can tell he's not fully aroused, your bulge splaying out over his thighs and his groin, seeking to surround his bulge or slip up his nook. Unlike you, he's not leaking genetic material all over the mattress, and his bulge is still sheathed. 

But he's thrusting his hips against you in quick little motions, and he's hissing curses against your neck like he's nearly desperate as you. It's a new thing, him stripping down before his bulge is already writhing away. Given the fuckin production your body's been over the sweeps, though, you figure you can help Kar out easy enough. 

"Get off a me," you breathe, gently pushing him back. He whines, his claws digging in your back. "Come you ass don't make a guy beg." 

"I don't have to make you, you do it often enough on your own fucking accord," he says, but he lets go and peels himself off your lap. "Ugh. I forgot how this is basically a romantic evening with a goddamn freezer-hatched miniature horrorterror." 

The tentacles of your bulge are much more akin--in your educated opinion--to a glubbin sea anemone but if Kar's inclined to be generous you won't argue. You move with him so that your positions are reversed, Kar laying back against the pillows and you leaning over him. You aren't certain that he'll appreciate you staring at him full-on, at least not yet. Instead, you try and figure out what he's so shy over from close up, through your hands skimming down his sides and what you can see of him while you bite and lick your way down his chest. 

Kar's always been a stockier troll than you. Most trolls are; you'd been inclined toward rifle and wandkind for a reason, you'd be glubbin pathetic in close-range combat. You're more built for swimming, and fast. Kar's more built for standing his ground and getting his sickles in someone. 

He's always been densely muscled in the shoulders and a little heavy around the stomach and hips. You'd long ago gathered he was as much insecure about that as he was the color of his bulge, though you found him appealingly solid and you somehow eventually convinced him of the fact. As the sweeps went by, he was more direct and less inclined toward shyness around you--you've spent more than a few mornings stroking your bulge to the memory of him besting you in a strife, pinning you down with his claws at your gills and fucking you while your bulge was still agonizingly retracted. Seeing that reluctance again is strange. But, you're discovering, perhaps not surprising given what Kar's grown to expect of your tastes.

He's thin, now. And not in a lean eel-like manner, like you; he's all bone under his scarred hide, save for a small holdout of fat around his stomach. You linger there, kissing over the soft flesh, and Kar snorts a laugh and pushes at one of your horns. You grin and lick him instead, earning his hands on both your horns and a full-on shove. Fine, you think, going with the motion. You'll take it as an invitation. 

His hips are sharp under your hands as you hold him, tilting him up toward your face. At first, you're just kissing as light as you'd done over his stomach down his contained bulge, but it's enough to have him growling low in his throat. 

"Fuck, Eridan," he says. 

His hands are still clutching at your horns, but he's not making any attempt to pull you around. You ignore it, and keep mouthing down, your own hands braced on his thighs. 

Finally, you think. You have to push at his thighs to make room first, but you're finally where you can lick slow up over the slit of his nook. His skin is tissue-thin, dry and delicate under your tongue, and he makes a low, disbelieving sort of noise before he's wrenching at your horns. It's nowhere near enough to thwart you from one of your all-time favorite activities, and Kar glubbin knows it. 

Your bulge keeps twining back and forth desperately between your thighs, a slick heavy mass.

"Oh fuck," Kar hisses again.

Mouthing sloppily at his slit, you part his nook with your thumbs, aiming to thrust your tongue up inside. The muscles deep in his nook are fluttering and squeezing something fierce, and you're growling as you feel him clench around your tongue. 

You also can feel Kar's bulge starting to firm up and slide out, nice and slow, from where your fingers are pressed against his sheath. This time he's pulling you in hard by the horns when you go to curl your tongue back out, but you're strong enough to resist such sad attempts to hold you in place. Not like you're going far, anyhow. 

You'd lick his nook for a sweep if he'd let you, but you're just as greedy for the taste of that freak bulge. 

You lick all around the base, where it's still emerging from the soft skin of his sheath. He snarls out a nervous warning when you open your mouth around his bulge, wary as ever of your proper fangs, but it isn't exactly the first time you've done this. You take the writhing tip careful in your mouth, keeping your lips over the points of your teeth. The rest of it gradually tries to wriggle in, and you hold what's emerging from his sheath steady and tight with your right hand.

"Fuck," he breathes again, "fuck, yes." 

He's always been hyper vocal on a concupiscent couch, same as anywhere else; so it isn't exactly like you can take it as a compliment. 

It's when he shuts up that you feel smug. With your left hand you reach over, pawing through the crate for the slimmest vibe you think might be still holding a fuckin charge. 

"Oh fucking shit, what are you fucking--" 

You pull off his bulge long enough to grin up at him. "You wwere showwin such fuckin interest before an I thought," you pull out the vibe, "maybe--" 

"Fuck yeah, all right," he quickly says. You grin again. Some trolls wouldn't be as keen about this sort of thing, but you figure the fact he pails you is evidence enough of how fuckin perverse Kar can get. His bulge squirms faster in your grip, the exposed tip lashing slick over your chin. Kar lets go of you then--maybe out of embarrassment--and grips at his own thighs, keeping his nook open for you. 

The vibrator makes a ridiculous amount of noise. It wasn't exactly top of the glubbin line when you bought it; you don't have near as much disposable income as what you were once accustomed to. It matters little, though--you don't have much in the way of neighbors, much less roommates--and right now, you're kind of glad for how much the buzzing racket seems to embarrass Kar. 

The opening of Kar's nook was already starting to flush red, to dilate open and get slick. When you start tracing the vibrator over the folds of skin, Kar curses even louder, and a trickle of bright-red fluid trails out from his nook. The buzz feels odd against your tongue as you lick the genetic material away. 

You don't thrust the vibrator up him. Kar rarely goes for that sort of thing, least as far as you know. You don't have a bulge that's entirely conducive to a thrusting manner of sex, so you could be wrong. You push it in shallowly, stroke the outsides of his nook, slide it up to drag over the edges of his seedflap. You take the tip of his bulge back in your mouth, letting it twist hot and thick around your tongue. You grind your hips against the too-rough sheets, desperate for any stimulation to your bulge. 

You listen as Kar goes from an endless litany of curses to silence and a few quiet, trailed-off demands. His fingers are slick with his own material when he reaches for you, petting clumsily at your face and neckfins. 

"Eridan, fuck. Let me-- just please--" 

"Wwhat," you ask. Your gills are flaring with a pitiful attempt to get air, and you let up with the vibe and let go of Kar's bulge to swipe at the red fluid trailing down your chin. Of course, his bulge just squirms before Kar can stop it, leaving an even more noticeable smear over your cheek and one of the lenses on your fuckin glasses. 

"Shit. Sorry--" 

"No it's fuckin…" you breathe out, shakily, not certain how to finish. It's fuckin incredible and ridiculous sexy is what it is, but you feel awkward telling Kar that sort of shit. You feel clumsy and empty and needy for anything Kar'll give you. 

When he reaches down to take your glasses, you let him. 

"Roll back over," he tells you. For a second, you're frozen with uncertainty--do you take the vibrator with, does he still want that?--but he sits up and nudges you gently. "This bulge isn't going to stay out all sweep, nookbreath. Come on." 

When you're on your back, Kar quickly gets you straddled again. This time, his bulge is pulsing, hot and slick, through your own. The small tentacles flow around him, clenching and releasing in waves, and Kar thrusts his thick bulge roughly against you. 

"Cod, Kar--" you whine. His bulge is unrelenting and searing against yours, and he's got his claws hooked in you, his blunt teeth biting harsh as he can at one of your fins. You twine around him, all your fuckin appendages clenched around his back, your hips tilting up to let him have whatever of you he wants--nook, bulge, glubbin whatever. 

The fact that you're bleeding so soon after he did something as pity-motivated as fuckin putting your glasses aside has you reeling. You're starved for any quadrant, and Kar's here fuckin swapping between them like a hero from a cheap thoracic-sac-containment-garment ripper. You scratch down his flank.

"That all you got you fuckin sorry excuse," you say, expecting him to tear at your flesh and maybe shove up your nook hard as he can, all mock kismesissitude. 

"Fuck no," he replies. 

And he pets over where he's marked you up and he kisses you, at once pale and matesprit sweet. 

You pull away quick as you can. "Bucket," you gasp.

He keeps thrusting against your bulge's grip, licking where he's torn up your right neckfin.

"Shit Kar no messin around I'm serious here." You're begging, but the pressure of fluid building up in you isn't going to let you wait long, and Kar doesn't seem inclined to care. He keeps pushing his bulge right in the midst of yours, the tip burrowing against the sensitive tentacle-less patch like it's going to find a nook. Your bulge keeps clasping and tugging and fuckin encouraging Kar even though you're on the verge of embarrassing yourself. "Kar, I swear I'm gonna fuckin die if I don't get a fuckin bucket an now." You're clenching your nook in an effort to hold it in, and you growl as you feel Kar's talons scratch carelessly around the opening. 

"Then you better find something to use."

"Shit Kar it's like twwo glubbin feet awway just grab--"

"I suggest your own fucking self," he says, his breath panting hot against your neck. "You bucket-licking nooksucking--" 

You don't hear the rest of the insult. What he's said already--just the fuckin suggestion that you go without a bucket, whatever the population of drones on this planet may be--is more than enough to demolish what pitiful fuckin control you had left. 

The first spurt of fluid trails back over your wastechute, pooling under your hips, and you almost think _fuck okay not that bad_. You've got to make this mattress last, and maybe if you can just fuckin get Kar out of the way you can just--

"Fuck," you hear him say, and he's pounding his hips frantic against you. Something hot drips down on your bulge. "I didn't think you were that close. Fuck." 

Okay. Forget the mattress. 

Your nook spasms, and your genetic material pours out in waves, staining you and Kar and half the concupiscent couch. It feels obscene, laying in your own fluid like this, soaking all up your back. But you're sluggish and delirious and you can't coordinate your limbs enough to roll out of the mess. You keep holding on to Kar clumsily, arms heavy, and mumble a whole lot of stupid nothing at him as he keeps fucking the now-loose grip of your bulge. 

Trying to concentrate enough keep clenching around him is beyond you, but Kar isn't seeming all that put out by the fact, his bulge grinding frantic against the sluggish tentacles. It's painful--you're far too sensitive for this--and Kar keeps it up regardless, for what feels like perigees. He's selfish as a proper fuckin kismesis. 

When he comes, he doesn't grab the bucket like you expect. 

He just goes still above you, hissing out a curse. You know what's going to happen, then, and you growl out as you feel the genetic material spill out over you in two short spurts. The fluid trickles hot over your nook to seep in the mattress along with your own. 

You can feel him shaking with strain, his breath loud and ragged in the silence of the cabin. He's resisting collapsing on you---probably some hypocritical prissy shit against laying in nookjuice--so you shove until he makes a fussy sort of noise and deigns to crawl off to flop in a dry portion of mattress. 

Even with the thermostat cranked to fuckin human hell, without Kar's body over you, you're struck with a sudden chill. 

Slowly, you sit up. You're half-glued to the bed, and outside the heat of the moment the sight of your lower body is more disgusting than not. Scrubbing at yourself with a sheet, you can see Kar watching you from the corner of your eye.

He fakes like he wasn't when you finish up and turn toward him fully. 

With Kar--or anyone else, for that matter--it's difficult to gauge how welcome you'll be. Once you're halfway clean, you make your hesitant way to lie near him. You reach out one hand to rest on his side. 

He doesn't shrug you off. 

You think of telling him he's got nothing to glubbin worry about. That whatever he thinks or whoever said shit to him, he's still a particularly attractive specimen of landtrollkind. That, far as you're concerned, he's still as perfect as a shouty fuckin mess of bad taste and insecurity can be.

He's also still fuckin dying. 

The words all stick in your windchute, and you have no clue how much time you let pass before you finally speak.

"Glad you decided to fuckin showw up," you say, staring at his back. You aren't even sure if he's awake, and you're kind of hoping he isn't. 

Taking your hand, he pulls you closer, letting you curl around him fully. Even if past-him has always whined about how much it's like sleeping with a troll-shaped slab of ice.

"After four sweeps of just you and a box of shitty plastic bulges, you'd _better_ be grateful." 

"Fuck you," you say, affectionately. 

He tells you to shut up and sleep. 

When you finally do, it's to the codawful familiar sound of his snoring, and with a face full of his hair.


	3. Chapter 3

One thing about where you live is, as Kar's fond of pointing out constant as possible, there's fuck all to do. Of course, for that first night--and the rest of the week after--it ain't an issue.

In the evenings, Kar sleeps in longer than you, and you let him. When he wakes, it's far past when the last rays of cold alien light have gone past the horizon, and you're both distracted enough by what you get up to when you crawl back under the concupiscent couch covers with him. It's a week of listening to Kar's stories of the Outside and--more enjoyable by far--figuring the ways around his brittle fuckin body. You talk him into salvaging the rest of your mattress and you get well-acquainted with scrubbing out your pail. You become accustomed to being all half-dressed most nights on account of Kar's need for a cranked thermostat, and on account of your mutual interest in being half-dressed around each other. It's seven full nights of pleasant enough company. 

Until Kar starts getting tetchy. Then it ain't too long before he's crawling up the walls and driving you up them besides. 

Around day nine, he's taken to sleeping in your cramped guest room. Good, you think, it's more than fine by you. Night ten, he's taken to commandeering your radio, and in no time flat he's shored up the wrath of six pilots, two governments, and every fuckin ship within frequency and you're halfway ecstatic when he just makes the entire thing fuckin explode two nights later. It's a complete mystery how he manages it--one night it's fine, the next you wake to the smell of smoldering transistors and come out to find a heap of gutted wire, and Kar not even looking half ashamed. It's that night you cave and take him with you to town, mainly--as you tell yourself--to keep the house from catching fire from Kar's sheer ineptitude. 

Much as you might prefer to forget the fact, you do have a job. In a manner of speaking, anyway--never anything official, as you've not that sort of patience and you're not inclined to take orders from a glubbin human, but it's work enough. Being the only sea troll for an entire state, particularly one with more coastline than every other state in this shitty fuckin country combined, is a decent enough enterprise. Right now, it's not your busiest season, cruise ships long gone from the harbors. But there's fair enough money in being a one-troll independent search and salvage, even off-peak. You take jobs sporadically, and you aren't always successful at finding the crap humans seem so keen on tossing off-board--they got an appalling habit of chucking out perfectly decent rings, and you just take in hauls after tour season and wait for the humans to get guilty about tossing 'em later--but you do enough to keep the hive warm. 

Often you'll take a couple weeks and travel to one of the bigger cities, where there's far better money, and Kar's come with you on a trip down to Prince Rupert before. This time, however, you're only going as far as the shitty docks of the shitty five-hundred-human town nearest to your hive. 

Much as possible, you try and avoid contact with humans and trolls alike; suchlike has been your instinct for sweeps. The contact you have is mostly through the post, and even that you keep at a strict minimum. Early on in Kar's regime of fuckin harassment, he'd make noises every visit about getting to town, soon as he was he was bored of having only you to insult. Every time, you'd resist. You'd try, mostly in fuckin vain, to remind him how aggravating he found the human species entire. 

Eventually you wore him down to such point that he stopped asking so habitually. You ain't certain how much fuckin good it's done, given that you're steering your boat toward the town docks. Same as you've done every fuckin time he's visited.

The cold spray of the sea kicks up pleasant over the bow of the ship, and Kar's huddled up in his coat and a stack of blankets he liberated from your cabin. You've only got the occasional grumble from him for distraction. 

Once, sweeps ago, you'd been convincing him of how fuckin shithive going into town was. It was already an argument you'd had countless glubbin times, even then. And, like ever, you would wind up caving in to his fuckin demands that very night anyway so in retrospect you don't see what the point was in flapping your windchute in the first fuckin place. But right before you'd thrown your claws up over it, he'd said one thing that would forever strike you as being so fuckin beyond the point of the argument. You would think about it all the same though, again and again, just--you figure--because of the incongruity. 

"You're not the genocidal blood-hungry fucking panjob you think you are," he'd said. For some fuckin reason, your mind is now all glubbin fixated on it again. You kind of wish he'd start fuckin whining about some random fuckin hoofbeastshit, just to give you something else to be annoyed over. 

What the fuck did he mean by it, you'll always wonder. All you fuckin trolls--except maybe those now being hatched Earthside--are some fuckin level of blood-hungry, some more literally fuckin so than others. 

Well, fuckin whatever, you think, steering the boat toward the town docks. It's a sweeps-old throwaway fuckin comment, and you've got worse to worry about beside, like Kar getting outta the boat and into town to piss off the fuckin negligible human populace before you can stop him. 

At least, once you're being forced to walk Kar down what passes for a main street in these parts, you get some satisfaction outta how he looks disturbed as ever at them creepy fuckin carved bears the humans got all over town. You can't say you're entirely keen on the manner in which they're carved, yourself. 

Far as you are concerned, there's only one thing worth visiting in town, and Kar makes a glubbin shitty companion on a one-stop tour, scowling at the human behind the post office counter. There's a few demands on your skills in the box you've rented for sweeps, so you sort the local shit from stuff concerning waters far from town.

By now, the humans here find you boring enough. Few of them are all that interested in Kar, either. He sets up to spend some time in one of the shitty fuckin restaurants in town, on account of his claim that he's sick of fresh-caught fish that's just the slightest of cooked. 

He wants to clog up his vascular pump with fuckin grease-slathered human food, he can have at it. Kar can do as he likes in this shitty two-boat town, you're heading to the harbor.

At night, the docks are largely abandoned, even though--given the latitude--it's fair early yet despite the dark. 

You keep the bulk of your clothes up in the boat, and dive in. 

For local jobs, the best you expect to be paid is a handful of change and worthless human gratitude. But at least it's a fair way to waste a night. Some asshole lost his keys, some bag of fuckin dicks can't find his human courtship ring, it's always the same fuckin story new fuckin night. Some jobs you know aren't worth attempting. Humans are impatient enough they'll make new keys if you aren't out here the very fuckin hour they chuck them. You bring in everything you find, anyway.

The harbor water here is murky, dingy. You've got okay vision--leastways underwater you do--but, as always, the work is slow going. You pick through silt in the general direction of where some drunkard thought he'd maybe lost his wallet. You let the batteries in your dive torch run low, hoping to catch any glint of metal. 

It isn't a hideous night, for all the work is boring and tedious. It's a break from Kar's endless fuckin racket, and though you were shit at remembering the fact as a wriggler, there's something rightful and pleasant about being in the water, even if it is half melted glacier and a quarter human garbage. You surface a few times, throwing what you've found over the railing of your boat, only to dive back down for more useless human bullshit. 

You swim out considerably far from shore, tracing the lead of some idiot who lost a class ring--yet another example of impossibly stupid sentimental human garbage--four summers ago. You've been looking for it, off and on, since. He's willing to pay good for it, so you're willing to search whenever you're in the area. 

You've never held out much hope for finding it. You put in an hour or so all the same. 

Though you're no Earth sea mammal--you don't have any particular physiological need for it--sometimes you get the odd drive to surface, even far-off from ship or shore. Boredom, you think. Right now, everything looks the same under the surface, dark and silty. There's the occasional brush of some dimwitted fish that hasn't evolved the sense to know a proper fuckin predator, leagues and leagues of nothing more than rocks and the distant racket of whales, and the uneasy knowledge that there will never be anything more in these harmless alien waters. 

When you surface, the stars are uncountable and uncomfortably bright, the dense mass of your galaxy bisecting the sky. You can only look briefly before you're squinting at the shore. 

You're not expecting to see anything aside from an abandoned shoreline and a couple lonesome boats, so it comes as a shock when you make out someone sitting on the docks. 

Outside of the water, your vision's always been shit, and you've left your glasses in the boat. But, based on your hazy perception of the manner of dress--and the general size and the fact that it's a being showing some fuckin iota of interest in your person--it's Kar. 

You consider ignoring him altogether, but you can't rule out that he's got himself in some fuckin situation with what passes for the law out here. If you let Kar die in some shitty Earth prison, you're sure to be held accountable for sweeps. For your own peace of glubbing mind, you start swimming back. 

Of course you're a reasonable fast swimmer, so you don't feel bad taking your time about it, swimming closer to seabed than surface. You still got a job and aside from that you don't glubbin want to look like Kar's got you all at his beck and fuckin call. For all your dithering, you find nothing. 

When you surface again closer to shore--but conveniently enough on the other side of the boat from Kar, so as to act like you'd come in on your own accord--you're startled to hear voices. Plural. 

And in Alternian. 

At least it doesn't sound like any strife. Kar's growly and irritable and insulting the other speaker in turns, but you'd only be concerned were he in any way otherwise. You paddle around, trying to catch sight of them before they can see you. 

Kar's sitting bundled up in his pea coat and scarf and the blankets and a pile of fuckin sweaters and it looks like he's got your coat thrown over his legs besides. You don't know where he stole whatever chair he's sitting on, but you guess that's far less mystery than where the fuck he found a troll. 

You're not close enough to tell much about the troll, least not for certain. Sure, it's obviously a land troll. And from the way he's bundled, he's either warmer-blooded or just plain unused to the climate--you've even seen Fef bundle up in these parts before. Beyond that, you're not certain of much. And frankly, you're not sure where it matters, far as blood caste goes. You'd never really seen where Eq got off on his complex. Far as you had always been concerned, land trolls are land trolls and all asking equally for a culling. 

Still, just from the virtue of the troll being in this part of the world at all, you figure you're looking at someone no cooler than a yellowblood. You hear it matters less and less to trolls these days, the old tradition of wearing some sign of your blood color if you're going to be bothered to wear color at all, so it might not matter how the troll's dressed. But you do notice it's all black and muted browns with a rust-colored scarf and gloves, and you can't imagine any fuckin bluebloods dressing in that sorta manner. 

The horns are a tell, too. He's got two intimidating-enough upward spires, but he also apparently got himself in line for seconds at the Inconveniently Bulky Lowblood Horn Depot. He's got a set of curved horns along with, twisting a heavy spiral toward his face. You expect the double helping of non-nub horn is aggravating Kar something fierce, and sure enough--even at this distance and without your glasses--you can tell he's trying to look anywhere but at that huge fuckin rack. The horns are deep orange at the bases, stocky and big enough that--along with the size of the troll himself--you figure he's gotta be around twelve sweeps. 

You wonder if he's one of the Earth-born trolls. He'd be around the right age, when that first brood was hatched. 

There's not much of the conversation you can make out. Their voices are pitched quiet enough that you can't hear it all over the waves and the sounds of the harbor, but from what you gather it's not much you're missing. Kar's every other word is fuck, same as always. The other troll's voice is softer than Kar's, and all you can hear is the occasional mumble of assent. Whatever Kar's complaining about, they're apparently in agreement. 

Given where they're standing, it's a fair long list of what they could be glubbin on about: the cold, the lack of fuck all to do in this country, the shitty fuckin welcome most trolls get out here. 

You're not too keen on getting yourself involved. Though thinking this way is an old--and, from what Fef and Kar say, a mostly selfish--habit, you keep treading water, hesitant with the knowledge that it could very well be _you_ that has them so irritable. 

You got your work, you think. And you're not sullen, you're just facing the coddamn facts. 

Before you get back under the surface, though, you make a begrudging approach to get close enough to hear Kar properly. He may be an irritable fuckin disaster of a troll and a liability for all your worldly possessions besides, but you'd never hear the fuckin end to it if you abandoned him to be culled by a fuckin Earth troll. 

"--so despite my own entirely fucking reasonable warnings to the asshole me of the future, I keep coming back for seconds like a fucking grub on Thank The Condesce Eve," he's saying. 

And even though you'd been full prepared for that sorta attitude, it still stabs at the old expanding-and-collapsing vascular organ. If Kar's speaking in such a manner, he's obviously well enough without you, and you can only hope you've kept yourself silent. You've got all settled on the notion of spending the whole night and most the day beside in the Portland Canal when Kar's new glubbin friend speaks up. 

"You hear that?" 

You idiot, you think to yourself. Why are you fuckin waiting around, why are you still glubbin here, just dive--

"What? No, I fucking didn't, but I have a fucking idea," Kar says, his voice raising loud enough to carry up to town and across to fuckin Alaska as well. "Eridan, you conceited fucking bag of nookwash, if you've been down there eavesdropping long enough to have barnacles selling fucking real estate on your nauseating excuse for a bulge--" 

"Jegus fuck Kar fuckin wwake evveryone wwhy don't you," you shout back. 

Fuck, you think again. You really are a pandamaged idiot. 

"Eridan, you pandamaged idiot. I didn't even fucking know you were there until you said something," Kar replies. He's still shouting, loud as ever, and you kinda get the notion he's not inclined to move his fuckin husk to figure out where you are. 

A few heavy footfalls above you on the dock are all the warning you get that Random Warmblood is a bit more motivated. 

"Hey," you hear. You're about to dive, not willing to fuckin deal with any land dweller hoofbeastshit, but the troll starts up talking to Kar again. 

"This Eridan, he's always so shy?" 

"Yeah. Sure. If shy is the slang you kids are using these days for _completely fucking neurotic_ , then yes." 

You growl another curse up at the both of them, and Kar's fuckin laughing at you, dry and aggravating. At least you can't hear the warmblood laughing quite so fuckin loudly. 

"Look, you're that goddamn offended, swim the fuck off. But we were talking about humans, since I know you were down there licking your bulge in a beautiful fucking act of maritime self-pity," Kar says. "Now stop sulking around in your one-troll celebration of the pathetic arts and get the fuck up here." 

While you are highly tempted to ignore him outright, you're at a fair disadvantage here. You could swim home and lock the door and see how Kar likes being abandoned to the elements, but he's sort of right by the fuckin boat and your keys are sort of right in your fuckin jacket right on his fuckin lap. And even if that weren't the case, there's seaplanes taking off most every morning. 

If you escape now, you'll only have to listen to Kar fuckin glub about it later. And as far as you're concerned, a few seconds of agony now is worth avoiding the fuckin weeks of agony Kar would give you later, should you swim off. 

The tide's out far enough to make it a right undignified climb to get straight on the dock from the water, so you make your way up the gunwale ladder to glare at them from the relative fuckin security of your boat. 

"Whoa," you hear the land troll saying as you fish about for your glasses, "he really is the troll of the seas." 

The way he phrases it isn't the only thing that makes you pause. 

He's not using the Alternian for "seas." The entire fuckin title is in English, jarringly out of place in the midst of his low-blood vernacular. You get your glasses on just in time to see Kar give him an affronted look. 

"Troll of the fucking what now," Kar growls. Pretty much the only thing visible of him is his face and a shock of hair that didn't stay stuffed under his hat, and he looks at once comical and pitifully frail. 

"Sea troll," you translate needlessly. You shake out your shirt and pull it on, more out of modesty than from cold. You are awkwardly underdressed compared to these two. 

Kar's frowning at you, now. "If he fucking meant sea troll, he'd fucking say 'sea troll.' Don't be a pedantic douche, what the fuck was that about." 

"Well, um,'" the troll stammers. "It's just a kind of… nickname we have up in these parts." 

You have no clue how to respond to that, and Kar's talking before you can even fuckin try anyway.

"You have a nickname," he says, flatly, "for this nautical bulgebiter." 

"Hey, I didn't come up with it," the warmblood says, holding up his hands. Now that you're able to fuckin focus, you can see his eyes are rust-colored. 

You also see he's fairly handsome in that rough fresh-outta-the-cannery sort of way but--as you find nearly every troll in paradox space fairly handsome--you'd be hard-pressed to say he's in any way _objectively_ good-looking. 

"It's what everyone calls him, on the halibut runs. He's, well…" The troll trails off. 

"He's _what_ ," Kar presses. You feel right fuckin uncomfortable having them talking over and about you, but it's not exactly easy to get a word in with Kar around. 

"Well, I'd heard he lives up here. But of course he's not really around, you know, on the major--erm," he cuts off again with a nervous sound, stepping back from Kar's glare. "Okay, okay. But remember, I didn't make it up, he's just been here forever, and so of course there's a story. About him being kinda good luck, you know, like you'll get a good haul if you see him." 

This makes Kar bust up again, and you have to protest. "Kar fuckin it's a shitty story okay but I don't see wwhere it's that glubbin hilarious." 

"Look, kid, this guy--take whatever shithive picture you've got of what good fucking luck is, and reverse it. That's this guy. He's the exact fucking opposite of lucky, he's so far from luck you could--" 

"An I don't sea wwhere you gotta be insultin about it either you fuckin motherglubber," you interrupt. 

And around then is when you notice the rustblood is flushed, trying not to make direct eye contact with either of you. He thinks you and Kar are angling for an ashen hookup, you realize. The thought of talking up a random troll for any quadrant--even inadvertently--leaves you all nerves, trying to backpedal from the shitty memories of your every attempt at romance.

"But Kar's fuckin right an all," you tell the troll. "It's a fuckin asinine tradition or wwhatevver." You're just absentmindedly agreeing with Kar to smooth over the caliginous air the conversation's been taking, most of your thoughts caught up in an attempt to calculate the last you even saw a glubbin commercial fishing vessel.

The troll shrugs, suddenly all easy-going. "It's mostly a human thing, so of course it doesn't make sense," he says. "But for a long time, you were kind of the only troll up here. And you're still the only sea dweller," now he's using one of the older Alternian terms, "so humans are going to make up some story." 

Particularly considering all their depressingly mythical accounts of fish-people, you suppose that's a fairly accurate assessment of the nature of humans. The land dweller approaches the boat a little closer as you say so, and you feel your earfins flushing. 

A shirt and a pair of fuckin miniature swim trunks is still woeful underdressed. Outside the water, you're used to wearing more than fuckin Kar. You're struck with how glubbin thin and vulnerable you must look. 

"And, at least from where I'm standing," the rustblood continues, "seeing you isn't that far from my idea of lucky." 

Okay, you think. 

Wow. Okay. 

So he wasn't affronted because you and Kar were fishing for quadrants he was just putting out a lure for a matesprit himself, and he's not even glubbin shy about it, coming on to a--

"Right. Nice meeting you. We're going," Kar says, standing up to throw his armful of blankets back in the ship. 

"Wwhat?" 

"You. Me. Leaving. Now. I'm fucking sick of freezing off my shameglobes." 

Needless to say, you're bewildered entirely by Kar's manner. He's not your fuckin matesprit or moirail. He's got no fuckin call for this sorta thing, and for a moment you're just sort of staring and waiting for him to laugh it off as a glubbin joke. When he ignores you and climbs in the boat, you turn back to the rustblood. 

"Fuckin, wwell. Wwe gotta get on our glubbin wway I guess," you say. Self-conscious, you fidget with your rings. "Sorry," you add, pitched low enough that hopefully Kar won't hear. 

"Yeah," he says. His voice is just as quiet, and he sounds almost as embarrassed as you. "You two are the same age, aren't you? It must be…" he trails off with a vague gesture. You figure you're meant to translate it as Incompetent Troll for "difficult," or "really fuckin depressing," and for a second you're tempted to point out that Kar's not your glubbin quadrantmate until you realize there's no point. 

You're not about to see this troll again. You don't even know his fuckin name. Who gives a glub if he has the wrong idea or not? 

And, you wonder, is it even the wrong idea? 

You'll probably never fill a single fuckin quadrant, but if you ever do, well, it's all gonna be the fuckin same. Kar mumbles something irritable and impatient from his seat. You're just thinking of how you're gonna have to keep a good distance here on out from warmblooded trolls like him. 

"Yeah," you repeat. "Wwell. Maybe sea you around." 

You are expecting nothing of the sort. 

The land-troll steps back from the boat, watching you as you take your jacket from Kar, as you grab your keys and rev up the ignition. 

"Good luck," he calls out, "if you need it, mer-troll." 

Kar takes care of being horrified by the line, making some generally obscene gestures and asking what sort of back fuckin water humans the troll's learned English from, so you yell back some meaningless generic thanks over the rant.

Even if you won't see him again, you figure it'll pay to be as polite to what few trolls are up here as you are to fuckin humans. 

Usually, you make some attempt at getting some of the haul of human property delivered while you're still in town. Some shit humans are so excited to have, they don't mind being woke up. But Kar's not acting like he'll agree with that plan, and you don't know that you've got anything so important tonight besides. 

The start of the ride back, Kar's looking as if he's gonna keep all clammed up, and so--rightful vexed by his fuckin attitude on the dock--you lay in to him.

"Wwhat the glub wwas all that about," you ask, "I mean really Kar I'm flattered an all but you got full fuckin quadrants an I ain't alwways gonna embarrass myself." 

Kar laughs shortly. You attempt not to be insulted. 

"Have you fucking met yourself? I'd have given you fifteen minutes to blow your chance with every troll in the Northern fucking Hemisphere," he says, and you attempt to get a word in for your defense. Kar talks right on over you. "You're not a _complete_ fucking asshole. You deserve to get at least one troll tricked into thinking that knocking pails with you wouldn't be a gogdamn daymare." 

"So wwhy'd you go an interrupt a guy I mean I wwasn't evven givven chance to get a glubbin name." 

"You're the only 'troll of the fucking sea' above the fiftieth parallel. I'm sure he can find enough working thinkpan in that disgustingly horn-addled excuse for a head to find _you_."

You're not able to argue that. Not like you're about to hock the cabin, and from what you hear you've got one of the longest-standing post office boxes in the state. You're sure, were anyone actually glubbin interested, it'd be easy enough for anyone to hunt you down. 

Which leaves you to wonder which is more irksome: that you're not certain you'll ever be the object of any troll affection, or that you're suddenly having this doubt regarding the fuckin sanity of returning any of said glubbin attentions. 

You fall into another brooding sort of silence. 

"Oh my gog," Kar exclaims after a minute of quiet. One gloved hand reaches over to give you a punch that you're just gonna choose to believe he honestly fuckin _meant_ to pull. The boat veers off course for a moment as you wince and rub the forming bruise. "Are you serious with this, fuckass? You're fucking ridiculous, that guy was all over you with that 'magic lucky pixie troll' hoofbeastshit, and you'll soon have him caught in your hideous fucking tentacles, both literal and figurative. In the meantime, though, you should probably make a vague fucking attempt at speaking with other trolls. Your Alternian sounds like it's being squeezed verb by choking verb from the festering hemorrhoidal wastechute of a quasi-educated lusus, and your attempts a seduction are probably locked at the stellar level of sophistication for which past-you was so well fucking known." 

"Kar my Alternian ain't--"

"Fuck, or just flirt with him in English and I can wish you _luck_ with the shitty made-up human words for the advanced fucking notions of troll romance, I mean I don't even know how _I_ understand you between the shitty fish puns, the mangling of two-thirds of the consonants in the word 'vowel,' and the fact that you only speak your native fucking tongue once every five sweeps." 

"I'll havve you knoww I read Alternian all the glubbin time," you feel compelled to point out, and Kar makes a dismissive noise like that matters fuck all. Biting your lip, you consider how to put what you need to say next in the most graceful fuckin fashion. 

"An anywway, not like it fuckin matters howw I flirt or wwhatevver. He's still a rustblood."

" _What_ ," Kar screeches, "you're really pulling that douchebag fucking hemospectrum shit? Now? Tens of sweeps after it completely fucking ceased to matter and oh wait as far as your shitty fucking nooksucking life goes _never fucking mattered to begin with_?" 

You are right-out gnawing on your lower lip now. "That's not fair Kar an you knoww that's not wwhat I mean," you say, "that's nevver mattered to me in any sorta meaninful fashion."

"Except where you orphaned a bunch of grubs and where you attempted to commit genocide on a nightly fucking basis," Kar mumbles, maybe just to himself. When you glance over you see he's frowning at you, like you're some incredibly shitty puzzle. "But I guess I see what you mean." 

Nearly at your cabin, now, it's only a short while that the two of you are quiet. Distantly, you hear the call of nocturnal Earth featherbeasts. That, and the engine's whirr and the water lapping against boat and dock is all you hear till you've pulled the keys from the ignition. 

You're gathering your shit and the night's haul when Kar starts talking again. 

"It's probably utter fucking shit for me--of all people--to be saying anything about this," he says. "And if you're thinking it's better to just keep from getting fucking involved, rather than put up with some depressing fucking bullshit in the future, well. Points and fucking kudos, you're probably right." 

Kar pauses a moment. You keep sorting and re-sorting stupid human jewelry, trying not to look directly at his solid-colored horns, or the lines in his face. 

"Whether you're really gonna let that stop you or not, Eridan, that's up to you. But from where I'm standing? Maybe you tried to escape with this, with your move to a fucking backwater so desolate that even _humans_ abandoned it, but you got involved ages ago."

There ain;t much to say in response to that. You climb off the boat. Standing back, you wait for an awkward time for Kar to disembark, but it's full fuckin evident he's expecting you to respond, first. 

"Yeah," you say noncommittally, "I fuckin did." You don't know whether he takes it as an admission to moving to a fuckin glacier, or as acknowledgement of your wrigglerhood mistake of opening pesterlogs with all these land dwellers. You aren't exactly certain which you mean, yourself, and you know you'll never come to any decent conclusion on whether either decision was worth the fuckin hassle. Kar looks not at all satisfied with the answer. 

Your bloodpusher aches. Whatever he's expecting, you sure as fuck don't think you've got it in you. 

"Wwant to freeze, be my fuckin guest," you finally snap. If he wants comfort, he can go to his matesprit. If he wants to talk it out, he can go to his fuckin moirail. You got no illusions left of what you are. 

You grab the pile of human flotsam, and head inside. 

Kar follows behind you in short time. You can hear him calling out exasperated insults as you open the cabin door, but at this point your'e just trying to avoid him seeing the level of your melodramatics. Given the level of strife between you the last few nights, you hope you can trust him to just head to the guest room and leave you the fuck alone. 

Huddled up on your concupiscent couch, you find yourself sulking over a drink and sniffling, quiet as possible. You've never been so proud a troll that you'd shied from showing emotion whenever situation calls for it, and occasionally when it doesn't. 

But you ain't about to fish for pity now, when you've no clue what you're getting so emotional over. You keep thinking of Kar and the rustblood and Fef and Sol besides, and you feel a fuckin jumbled mess. This is what you fuckin wanted once, you keep telling yourself; it's the right fuckin order of things and you shouldn't be so uptight and dramatic about it all. 

Still, whatever you tell yourself, you're just fighting to ignore the raw feeling in your thoracic cavity and the sound of Kar stomping around your front room, and the pale light of day is already seeping past the curtains by the time you pass out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks go to [Hebridean sheep](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebridean_\(sheep\)) everywhere. [youdidnotseeme](http://youdidnotseeme.tumblr.com/) did the illustration, and I am amazed and can't thank her enough!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the chapter containing all the violent imagery, so major warnings below for explicit and sexual gore for the first part of this chapter. If you want to skip the guro-style hurt and go straight for the comfort, click [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/562584/chapters/1048931#skipcut).

Outside the cabin, it's full daylight. The sun here is distant and cold. During the long days of the summer season, you are often out in the light. It is nowhere as searing as Alternian day. 

The angle of the light is strange for summer. Winter, then, you think, and the ground is hard with packed ice. You don't know what brought you out here. During the winter, you always sleep through the day. 

You walk around the cabin. Something woke you up. That much is obvious. But everything around you is silent and still. 

The trees are empty. Against the dock, the water laps without a sound. Your boat is gone. You are unconcerned with that fact, sure to your bones it was something else that drove you out into the sun. 

Behind your cabin is a woodpile. You do not chop it yourself. You prefer to buy or trade for the kindling from humans. Still, you keep a hacksaw to trim down tinder when needed. When you first round the cabin, that is all you see: the ice-coated blue tarp you keep tied over the firewood, the hacksaw leaning against one side. 

Your cabin is not large. Once you've circled it, you stop by the front door to listen again.

But still there is nothing. The certainty that someone is here consumes you. When you enter the cabin, each room passes by in a featureless haze. Everything is vague and unremarkable, familiar as your own reflection. 

There is no one in there, at least that you can see. You consider calling out, but hesitate. There is no indication that whoever is here will be welcoming. 

You head out again. There is now a blue-and-black featherbeast roosting high on a tree. It is watching you. 

Propped against the side of the house, you find the hacksaw. It is as if someone threw if from around the corner. 

Uneasy, you pick it up. You head back to the woodpile. 

"Troll of the sea," you hear. "Hello." 

It's the rustblood. Of course, you think. Did you invite him? Why is he sitting on the woodpile, in broad fuckin daylight? 

Your thinkpan is all foggy. The universe is obeying some logic you're utterly incapable of following. 

"Hey," you reply. The hacksaw is no longer in your hand. 

Wherever and however it had vanished, you are glad it is gone. Nothing says 'welcome' quite like a violetblood with a hacksaw. 

"Wwhat are you--" 

"I had to see you again," he says, "Or is it 'sea'?" 

You blink at him. You feel as if you should be flustered. You should at least be confused. 

But somehow, this seems the obvious course. He had been flirting red out on the town dock. He has found you again. And there is no one to interrupt, this time. 

"Wwell, I'm glad you swwam by," you say. You should invite him in, you think. He must be freezing. You can hardly stand the winter days here, yourself. 

"I'm glad to be here, too," he replies. "Now come here." 

Really, you should be taking this inside. 

You start walking to him. Your motions are sluggish, as if you're weighed down. As if you're swimming at a great and unfathomable depth. At the same time, your body feels bizarrely beyond your control. Uneasy, you look behind you. 

The woods are empty. Snow falls soundlessly against the boughs of the trees. The blue-black featherbeast is resting on one of the branches behind you. 

It cleans one wing. Its beak moves, as if it is calling out. There is no sound beyond the faint rhythm of the land troll's breath. 

You turn back. 

The troll's heavy brown coat is spread out on the ground. Beside it, his clothes are folded neatly. 

You know you are blushing. When you hear him behind you, you nearly strain your neck in your haste to look at him. 

"Oh my cod, wwhat--" 

"Relax, mer-troll," he says, stepping back to stand by the coat. "It's what you've always wanted, right?" 

"You're gonna fuckin freeze out here is wwhat," you blurt. 

Despite the cold, you are sweating. This must be how Eq feels, you think, one-hundred percent of the time. 

The rust-blood is completely nude, save for his boots and scarf. It is, in your opinion, a glubbin incredible look. His skin is largely unmarred, save for his arms and hands, which bear the cuts and scars of a fishery worker. He is taller than you, and broad-shouldered and heavy. He is unlike you, and unlike Kar, and you wonder again how much younger he is. You wonder if he spent his whole life here, sheltered and safe, in one of the small post-Alternian communities of Earth. 

It would explain a lot. The apparent dismissal of Alternian norms. 

The lack of caution.

"You're distracted," the troll says. He is smiling. His fangs are large, and not as sharp as yours. 

"Sorry. This is just sorta a surprise an all." 

He sits on the blanket. "You should really come here," he replies. 

You have the impression that any protest you put forth, anything you say, he will not acknowledge. You try to convince him to come inside all the same. The cold, the openness of the terrain, the featherbeast in the trees overhead, bearing unsettling witness--you would figure he would agree in a moment. You would figure he would've broken into your cabin the minute he'd arrived. 

How did he get here, anyway, you wonder. None of this makes any sense. 

You don't dwell long on the fact. 

"Come here," he repeats. He is spreading his legs. His bulge is unsheathing before you, a thick ridged rust-brown tentacle, slick and longer than anything you've seen outside troll porn. 

Fluid trickles down your inner thigh. Your pulse hammers in your throat. 

Fuck. This guy wants to freeze, let him. 

Kneeling down, you straddle his lap. His bulge presses and writhes against your abdomen, the hot tip of it running slick over one of your gills. You growl with discomfort.

You are agonizingly aroused. When did you get naked, anyway? Not that it's important. This bulge was meant to fuck you, and you tell the nameless troll as much, you take it in your hand and guide the pointed tip toward your nook. He laughs and kisses you, his hands are bruising your hips. He angles you and lets his bulge pierce your nook. 

He's fuckin huge, and nearly as hot as Kar. You're so full. With your bulge sheathed, this would be painful and intolerable. The troll is milking the small tentacles with one calloused hand. You can't remember when you worked on that particular ordeal. It strikes you as highly unnatural that you wouldn't recall a strange land dweller watching you unsheathe, and right then, you're on the verge of realizing something--you're not sure what--but the troll pulls you down for another frenzied kiss. 

"You're so pitiful, sea dweller," he breathes against your bruised lips. You've bitten him in your excitement. Blood is oozing from the cuts on his lip. You taste it on your tongue, hot and metallic. 

You shudder, and fuck back on his bulge harder. You are right on the verge of filling a bucket with him, with this strange troll. Each ridge of his bulge pulls at your stretched-out nook when he writhes out, only to glide it back in again smoothly. You don't protest when he retracts, until his bulge slips from your nook entirely with a wet noise. 

"No," you beg, "wwhat are you doin an if the answwers anythin else than gettin a bucket--" 

The troll grins, squeezing your bulge lightly. Your nook is raw, painfully empty, but you groan and thrust into his hand. You are eager for any touch. "Seriously wwhy'd you stop," you plead again when he remains silent. 

"Let me get this inside me," he murmurs, and you consider arguing--it's not that good, you want to say, I was having fun before--but he doesn't look as if he'd let you beg off. It's not as if you find it completely unappealing, and if you're gonna be quadrantmates you may as well let him have a go early on. You grunt your agreement and thrust into him with a short motion. 

His nook is tight and feverish. The short tendrils of your bulge fan out, probing the slick passage, making you feel twice as thick inside him. You don't thrust--you tend to accidentally pull out when you get excited--and instead hold his hips to keep him tilted up at you, rocking yourself against him and letting the small tentacles twist at the walls of his nook. 

In moments, you are gasping and cursing. It's still not the same as having your nook split by a huge bulge, but he's fuckin feverish and gripping around you, and okay had you known woodpiles were such an aphrodisiac for lonely fishertrolls you would have set up an entire fuckin lumberyard by the docks sweeps ago. 

The strange troll is growling and moaning. His bulge is whipping wildly between you. You can tell by the way his nook is spasming around you, he's on the verge of orgasm. 

You reach out to grab the bucket beside you. Suddenly, the land dweller is still. 

"You know this isn't what I wanted." 

Pausing with the bucket in your hand, you stare at him. 

"Wwhat do you mean?" 

"I asked for you to get inside me, troll of the sea." 

You're still rocking against him. Even if he's bewildered you completely, you're no further from needing to come.

"Wwhat the fuck do you mean?" you repeat. 

Settling the bucket between your legs, you urge him to kneel up over it with you. 

And it's then you realize you've never had a bucket out here. Why would you? It'd be beyond indecent. 

When, you're not sure, but you have pulled out of him. And between his legs, you are holding the hacksaw. 

The teeth are pressed against his pelvis, against the base of his bulge. Shocked, you wrench your arm back. 

And then you try again. 

Nothing moves. You are straining your arm against some invisible force. You are trying to stand and run on deadened legs. 

"Oh fuck oh fuck sorry I don't knoww wwhat's happenin," you babble. You are panicking. Your bloodpusher is beating near as fast as his. But the land dweller just stares at you, expressionless. Like a corpse, your mind supplies.

And it's with that thought that your arm finally starts to move. 

The blade saws easy through his skin, through fat and muscle, through a sickening grind of bone. The rust-colored spill of blood runs over the grip of the saw and your hand, a trickle that's soon flooding your arm in a searing spray, in a fuckin hideous mockery of orgasm. 

You can't watch. You're still babbling apologies through your terror, looking him in the face.

To your horror, he still does not react. He just stares at you. His hands are still curled around your shoulders, as they were when you had been pailing, as if you were still grinding your bulge against his body instead of--

You feel the saw wrench through the final layer of bone, feel it cleave easily upward through his abdomen. 

There is sound out here, now. There is a loose liquid plopping as his internalized genetic sac, his vestigial oviducts, his bowels--as all of it slops out, over your arm and onto his coat. 

"No," you keep sobbing, "god, no. I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

The saw keeps rending through him, higher and higher. You can feel his lungs collapse and expand around your arm. His blood is spurting in a ceaseless torrent from vasculature torn into a useless mangle of tissue. And still the troll is only staring and you find yourself wishing--begging him in between your apologies--that he would just die. 

Your hand comes to a stop before he does. He's split clear to his bloodpusher. You can feel it, kicking wet and strong. Suddenly able to control your body, you wrench the hacksaw back. It pulls from him in a loud, disgusting slop. 

"Oh fuck," you choke out. Your face is coated in tears, in snot, in the spray of his blood. "I don't--"

"Remember," the troll says, as some force urges you against him, "this is what you wanted." 

"It's not, fuck I swwear it's not," you beg. You're fighting against whatever is driving you on to him, but to no effect. You're shoving him back to lie on the frosted ground. You're squashing through the steaming heap of his organs. You're straddling him again, your bulge fully aroused and squirming, and even as you howl out fervent denials you're shoving in to him, fucking the horrendous gaping wound you've carved. 

The tentacles of your bulge splay out over the apex of his bloodpusher, squeezing as it pulses against you; his blood is pouring hot and sticky over your thighs. 

Much as you fight, you can't get away. Much as you retch and sob, you can't stop the arousal coursing through your body. 

You're turned on by this, you think hysterically. You sick fuck. 

His claws dig into your hips, and you can't tell if he's pulling you in or trying to shove you away. Your hips keep pounding against the mangled shell of his body. He keeps watching.

Grabbing at his upswept pair of horns, you try in desperation to at least force him to look away from the horror you are inflicting. "Please," you beg when he resists your pull, "fuckin please. I can't stop." 

Beneath you, the strange troll is terrifying in his serenity.

"Do you even fucking want to, motherfucker?" you hear someone ask. It is not the voice of a warmblood. 

You didn't think it was possible to be any more petrified. Cold sweat breaks out over your back. Slowly, under the same foreign volition that has been guiding you, you turn. 

You are still bulge-deep in the breathing body of another troll. You are, aside from Fef and Meenah, easily the most advanced troll on this planet. If there is anyone you should fear, you think, it should be yourself. 

But the shadowy form behind you has you struggling even more. You are pleading your innocence. You are trying, frantically, to run. 

You have not seen Kar's moirail in tens of sweeps, and even now you find it difficult to focus on him. Despite the daylight, he is somehow insubstantial, but he is no less intimidating for it. Since you last saw him, he has grown to the full size of an indigoblood. 

His shadow blots out the forest. The spires of his horns are cutting the sky. 

"Fuck, a course I wwant to, wwhat the fuck does it look like, fuckin help me," you whine. You aree not above begging, even if it is a fuckin freaky stoned clown you're pleading with.

Gamzee--or his shadow--comes closer. "I can motherfucking impart on you what it looks like from where I got my motherfucking stand on," he says. 

His voice is piercingly loud in the silence of the day. He does not sound particularly inclined to believe anything you say. 

"Please Gam, you gotta help me I havve no fuckin clue wwhat's happenin," you say. 

You look back down at the rustblood. He is still placid, like you aren't talking to a giant immaterial subjugglator. Like you're not gripping at his horns, like you're not bulge-deep in his thoracic cavity. "Sorry, shit I'm so fuckin sorry," you tell him, again. You know you are repeating yourself. You know you are rambling in your panic. 

It doesn't matter. The land dweller will act the same no matter what you say or do. 

The thought comes to you that he may be under some external control as well. That there's an obvious source in the immediate vicinity, given the power Gamzee has over lowblooded land trolls. 

"You want my motherfucking help, brother?" Gamzee is asking. You can feel him getting closer. You don't turn around. 

As you watch, the rustblood blinks up at you as if waking. Horror grips your bloodpusher. 

The troll starts screaming. 

Your attempt to escape is nearly successful this time, your limbs are cooperating. The troll beneath you is clawing and fighting to get away. 

A heavy, shadowed hand presses you back down. 

"This is what was what your heart was always up and motherfucking feeling," Gamzee says, and you feel some odd movement behind you. As terrible as the sight of the rustblood sobbing in torment might be, you are not turning around. "Isn't this all where you were motherfucking having your hopes at for my nubby-horned bro?" 

"No, you crazy fuckin--" you start, before trailing off. Whatever's happening behind you doesn't bode well. Gamzee still has you shoved down, you're pressed deep in the land dweller. Why won't your bulge fuckin retract? 

You probably should hold off on insulting Gamzee, at least for now. 

The motion continues. The rustblood keeps flinching and crying out. 

"Gam no, I've nevver thought a this I fuckin swwear, not about Kar or fuckin anyone," you plead.

"So you never motherfucking wanted to up and cull any of your motherfucking land-hatched brothers and sisters, is that the word you're fucking spilling unto me?" 

"I--fuckin no, Gam. I mean yeah but that's all fuckin ovver an anywway nevver like this. Jegus sake. Fuckin nevver--nevver like this." 

"So you were up and having a friendly little fuck with a motherfucking garbageblood?"

"Yes, fuckin--" whatever he's doing behind your back, he's getting closer. "Yeah, okay?" 

"Like with my motherfucking pale brother?" 

"Fuck, sure, wwhatevver," you say, and add a blurted, "Maybe evven more." 

It might gain you some points in your favor. Maybe he'll believe you. 

"So you're telling me you'd like to up and spend some motherfucking time with this lower-than-shit motherfucker?" 

"Yeah," you say, before you're yelling out in pain. 

Something has stabbed through you. It passes out again, pulling something foreign and coarse through your skin. 

It happens again. 

"Then you're in some motherfucking luck, motherfucker." 

The sharp stab tears through your groin again. You know what's happening. 

You cannot get away. With a sick foreboding, you look behind you. 

From his pelvis upward, the rustblood has been sewn shut with stiff black thread. You do not see the pile of organs. Perhaps Gamzee shoved them back. Right now, a few loops of bowel are the least of your concern. 

Gamzee passes the thread back through you. It pierces the base of your bulge. There is violet blood dripping out over Gamzee's rust-coated hand. In this moment, you realize you would literally rip your own bulge off to escape. 

Gamzee keeps pressing you down with his other hand. Between him and your terror, you are frozen. 

"Fuckin-- Gam, stop. Please. I'm beggin you. Fuckin stop oh god," you sob, over and over. "Oh god." 

The nameless rustblood has ripped your flesh to shreds. You can't fuckin blame him. Blood seeps from the torn remains of your gills. He is beyond words, and you beg Gam for his sake, too. Hoping that, while Gam doesn't have any mercy for you, maybe he'll have some for this random fuckin troll. 

The needle keeps moving endlessly upward. 

There is no stopping this, you realize. Your bulge is being sewn in to this troll, buried in his viscera. 

There is no escape. 

"Don't think we ever up and motherfucking forgot," Gamzee says. You do not know what, or who, he means. You are beyond all reason. 

At some point, he finishes. At some point, there's only the pain of claws tearing at you and the throb of thread pulling at your skin. Gamzee kneels back. Now you can sense him staring at you. He's admiring his handiwork, you think, and you try not to look at that crooked line of stitches. You try not to see the nauseating point where the base of your bulge has been fused with another troll's body. 

"Making yourself comfortable, motherfucker?" Gamzee asks. With a sluggish realization, you know you can get away. Now. If you can just tear yourself free. 

Pain sears up your arms as you fight and cut yourself on the lowblood's horns, shoving with mad desperation at his struggling body. Your digestive sac spasms. You feel the sickening crack of one of his horns snapping, easy as kindling, and all the while Gamzee is just fuckin watching--

  


You wake with bile in your throat and your hands stinging. You're already sitting up, cold sweat sheeting your skin. Swallowing, you breathe slow through your cartilaginous nub, fighting back your residual nausea. 

You can't hear any stirring outside your respiteblock, which is some small relief. 

Maybe you didn't fuckin scream, after all. 

At least, you think, you hadn't yet got fuckin coordinated enough to get a new mattress. Unclenching your talons with a hiss, your blood pulses slowly onto the mangled springs. It's been a while since you've done so much damage in your sleep; there's rent fabric and violet-stained stuffing and metal surrounding you. Your hands fuckin burn with pain now that you're conscious enough to realize it. The forming clots tear open again as you flatten your palms enough to examine the damage, and you curse at yourself. 

Not as if a fuckin concupiscent couch is about to kill you. The wounds are disproportionately agonizing--like stubbing a fin or a getting a paper cut--and the slow ooze of blood is already clotting up once again. 

Thank fuck, is all you can think. 

Nausea still churns at you and your bloodpusher's still racing, but at least it was just a glubbin dream. You're fine, Kar's fine, the land dweller's fine, everyone's fuckin fine and more important there's no fuckin shithive maggot asshole clowns for fuckin miles on miles. You keep taking slow breaths, waiting for your nerves to settle. You're fuckin alive and there ain't _that_ much blood on your hands, you tell yourself. You might be a little scratched up, but who gives a glub. You're whole and breathing and there ain't fuckin needle or thread in sight. Sure, you're gonna have to find some way to con Kar into ditching your hacksaw for you without him knowing the score. And sure, the concupiscent couch is beyond all fuckin hope, shredded and soaked through as it is with--

You trip over the sheet tangled between your legs, cut your hands open one more time as you catch yourself while you're stumbling out of bed. 

Blood smears on the doorknob as you wrench it open, you're swallowing back the rush of saliva flooding your mouth. Who fuckin cares if you coat the whole house in your own fuckin blood, and you don't even give a solitary fuck if Kar sees you like this or not. You gotta get outta this fuckin room, and get kneeled over the fuckin toilet, right the fuck now. 

In your rush, you have just enough presence of mind to get the bathroom door locked behind you. Then you've got your arms braced on cold porcelain, and you're retching up fish and gin. You try to stop, but there's no controlling it: even if you _could_ ignore the rank fuckin aroma, you couldn't stop heaving. Clear to your knees, your thighs are sticky and wet, sheeted in the violet stain of your genetic material. 

It's not long before all you're doing is gagging up mucus and swallowed tears. Your face feels swollen, your cranial skeletal airpockets plugged up and aching. 

Snuffling in a long, miserable noise, you succeed in getting yourself to choke on another run of dry heaves. At least it's a distraction from your entire fucking lower body, you think. What the fuck is wrong with you, you're a sick glubbin fuck, a fuckin mess. You've only got a dim awareness that you're muttering this to yourself in between coughing and retching. Eventually, you realize you won't be able to stop if you don't fuckin wash off. You're just gonna keep smelling genetic material and half-digested fish. The mere thought of either is enough to send another wave of debilitating nausea through you. 

Sweeps later, when you're finally able to get your fuckin legs to stop shaking long enough to stand on them, you flush the toilet and stagger the two fuckin steps to the shower. 

You set it hot as you can stand. Your guts are still making every effort to upend themselves across the bathroom floor, and the shock of heat splashing in your face and gills will hopefully distract you with a different sort of miserable. For a moment, you just stand there, letting your shoulders flush bright violet with the heat. 

Then you set to scrubbing. 

You aren't certain how long you're at it. You've worn down the soap into two slivers, and your gills sting from the suds. Your inner thighs and nook are raw, but at least they're fuckin clean and you've no further inclinations to be puking up your fuckin swim bladder. Shutting off the water, you still have to brace yourself on the walls to crawl from the shower, no less unsteady than when you went in to begin with. 

Now that you're not a complete glubbin mess, you're at least coherent enough to figure out it'd be a fuckin brilliant idea to sit down. You collapse heavily on the rim of the bathtub, exhausted and overheated, and try to catch your breath. 

The door is rattling. You ignore it. 

What the fuck, you keep thinking. It's the only thing your heat-addled thinkpan seems capable of comprehending, a repeated loop of "what the fuck." Kar's yelling something from the other side of the door, but fuck if you have the energy to deal with him now.

It's not like you don't have daymares. You've had fuckin sweeps on sweeps of them, and fuck all for respite. 

There is synthetic sopor on this planet. You sure as fuck can't afford it, though, and your only hopes for avoiding your own personal horrorterrors is to exhaust yourself beyond all fuckin reason. Generally speaking, it usually helps having some fuckin asshole cluttering up your hive to cause enough racket that your brain gives up and lets you have a coddamn break. 

Those dreams have made for fuckin barges of clawed-up linens and clothes and pillows and concupiscent couches. 

But you've sure as glubbin fuck never wrecked your mattress in a manner so shameful, your dreams have never been like that. Being sawn apart, getting shot at, being dissected or filleted or even fuckin sewn together, sure. Shooting Fef or Kar or pulling the trigger on your entire fuckin race, absolutely.

Fuckin eviscerating some lowblood kid and shoving your bulge up his--

"Oh gog," you whine to yourself. You tighten your claws against your legs, trying to stop a new surge of nausea. What the fuck. _What the fuck_. 

Something bangs against the door, hard. 

"Eridan, we all know you're a fucking paragon of drama and no one's contesting you for your seat on the throne of emotional fucking theatrics so open the goddamn door," Kar rants. 

You rest your head on your knees. Hearing Kar go off, you find, is actually right soothing. 

"I don't fucking hear you moving, asshole." The door rattles again; this time you can hear splintering. "That's part of _opening the fucking door_ , you know. Step one, get your fingers out of your wastechute. Step two, walk to the door. Step three, open the door. Now you fucking try." 

Briefly, you get your thoughts together enough to consider it. If you don't stand up, you try to tell yourself, he's just going to kick down the door and fuckin leave you to figure out the repairs. It'd be a lot less work to get up now. 

Your legs don't seem at all amenable to the concept of carrying you over to the door, though. And your thinkpan is still all groggy and preoccupied with your current ordeal. You decide that, as far as current-you is concerned, Kar and future-you can have all door-related responsibilities. It's the least you can do, though, to mumble something reasonably reassuring in Kar's direction. 

"Okay yeah if that was supposed to mean anything else than 'I'm not a corpse yet but I'm fucking working on it' I'm not getting it," Kar replies. "You know what? Fuck this." 

You are unsurprised to hear the door break open. The lock was cheap came-with-the-bathroom-door bullshit, so Kar should have been able to bust it alone with no glubbin trouble. Course, he has to get his spite out on something, and this time it's by wrecking your fuckin house. It'll be much later that you assess the damage, where Kar had cracked the doorjamb entirely. 

The sudden surge of cold air that follows his break-in makes you realize you've depleted your hot water for the entire fuckin month. 

"Jegus fuck, Eridan," you dimly hear Kar say. Every glubbin inch of you is heavy, like you've swam head-on into a gillnet. By the time you get your head to cooperate enough to turn in Kar's general direction he's already in front of you. 

"Hmph?" you mumble. Your throat feels raw, and your voice comes out all nasal.

Kar's hands pet heavily over your face and shoulders. "Shoosh. You're okay," he says. He's gentle as he paps over you, his hands occasionally lingering like he's checking for damage. "Day terror," he tells you. It's more reassurance than question.

You murmur in wordless agreement. Kar must be satisfied on some level with your general state of being, because he pulls away to grab a towel and toss it over your head. You hadn't even realized you were still wet. You curse--leaving your body damp is one thing, but letting your hair air-dry is a veritable sin. Raising your hands, you attempt taking on the task of drying your hair, but Kar paps you into submission right off.

"Just hold still. Fucking idiot," he growls. He's more rough with the towel than you'd be yourself, scratching vigorously around your horns and pulling at your hair. It makes you start up with the low rumbling of a sick wriggler getting fussed over by his lusus, an instinctive sound. You could stop, but you're warm and content and it's nice to say so to Kar, without having to say a single embarrassing word. 

He moves on to stroke the towel down your arms and torso, perfunctory and businesslike, making disapproving noises all the while. It's just harsh enough to tip it from being a quadrantlike sort of affection. You lean against him.

"You conceited princess," he says, running the towel gently over your gills, "you disgusting bulgesucking disaster. If you burnt your nook, it serves you fucking right." 

You cough out a broken laugh. "I think it's fine, wwanna check?" 

He shoves at you lightly, growling that you're a nookbrained fucking moron, and you give him a tired grin. 

He stares at you a second. You can tell he's evaluating you, but you've no clue what for. You're wrung-out, floating in a pleasant state of exhaustion and emptiness. It feels like ages, but eventually--whatever it is Kar's looking for--he seems to find it. 

"Okay," he says, papping your shoulder lightly. "You're fine now, oh Troll of the Seas. Up," he commands. You'd resist, but Kar's always been fairly convincing when he puts his glubbin mind to it. You stagger to your feet. "Let's get this ghastly sack of fins you call a body back to bed before you--oh what the fuck is it now." 

At the mention of bed, you balk. You are not about to go back for second helpings of debilitating-as-fuck nausea, and you're even less keen to have Kar see all that fuckin mess you left behind. Kar gives you another ornery shove, and you nearly fall over in your attempt to keep your feet glued to the floor. 

"Did you wash off any fucking ability to operate your legs in a manner conducive to not falling flat on your hideous fucking face? What is the fucking idea?"

"I'm not gonna fuckin go in there Kar," you protest. Kar gives you another little shove. 

"I know it's a lot to keep in that minuscule fucking excuse for a thinkpan, but you do have a _goddamn spare room_ ," Kar says. You put up another moment of struggle in a shitty attempt to act as if you hadn't forgot about an entire fuckin room before letting Kar get you argued out of the humidity and into the hall. 

Unsurprisingly, the spare room is hot, smelling of woodsmoke and of Kar's body. After the humidity of the shower, the dry air irritates your gills something fierce. Still, aside from coughing pitifully and making a vague indication that maybe Kar shouldn't keep it so fuckin intolerable in your house, you're not about to complain. 

What does come as a surprise is the state of the bed he'd been using. He's piled the middle of the bed with pillows and cushions from your living room's chair and couch. There's a few stray pillows from your own concupiscent couch, which makes your digestive sack seize with guilt.

"Kar," you start. Your Alternian's even more rocky and mangled than usual. "I havven't been in a pile for sweeps an I sleep just fine--" 

"Shut up," he interrupts, pushing you toward the heap of upholstery. "And get in, for fuckssake." 

He's in one of his moods where you know he's not gonna budge, so you climb in the middle of the pillows. You feel ridiculous doing so--the cushions keep sliding all over, and you're a sight taller than when you last huddled up in a pile of anything--but Kar's insistent and helping besides, pushing the pillows back in place as your burrowing disrupts them. Once you're situated, he grabs a blanket and crawls in beside you. 

With the covers pulled over your head, and Kar's heat beside you, you feel surrounded, closed-off from the world. 

So soon after a daymare, you'd expect it to be claustrophobic, the lowblood warmth of Kar a horrifying reminder. 

Instead, you feel cocooned. Kar rumbles beside you, soft half-audible reassurances in Alternian--all lines from old pale romances, about not killing anyone tonight, about how peaceful you are in this exact moment of time--and you should be offended for his moirail's sake, terrified of his moirail, or both. 

You should be pushing him away. 

Resting your head against his thin chest, you let yourself be calmed by the purr of his voice. Against your better judgement and all justified caution regarding who it is Kar's cheating pale on right now, you feel safe. 

"It was just a dayterror, idiot," he murmurs, "it was never you."

Despite your instincts fighting against it, you fall slowly into a deep and dreamless slumber. 

And when you wake, the room is still dark--or it's gone dark again after the short light of day--and Kar is gone. The pillows are undisturbed, a still-warm shelter around you. 

Beyond the door, you can hear someone moving, and the cabin smells purely of ocean air.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who left comments, kudos, or just took the time to read this far! You guys are the best.

Later, Kar will mention nothing of your dayterror or his fuckin unconscionable display of pale infidelity. And though you might have some appreciation for Kar's prowess in pile-building, and you might be somewhat thankful for that half-assed cleaning job he'd carried out, you sure as fuck are not gonna be the one to broach the glubbin topic. 

The two of you share all of one awkward evening--that first, when you're wary about the state of your stomach and too nervous to eat, when you find yourself clanking the spoon about in your coffee and waiting for Kar to say fuckin anything--before you fall easy enough back into your shared routine of near-affectionate strife. Lucky for you, Kar is driven mad right quick by the sound of your fidgeting in general and by the noise of clattering metallic scooping utensils in particular, and he's also willing enough to mock a guy for being moody without making any detailed references to your terrors. 

Another full week passes in that lazy sort of manner. You don't return to town, and amazingly Kar doesn't make any fuss regarding the fact. 

Every morning, you fall asleep alone, huddled in the few cushions you decided to haul in your room. Every night you wake up uneasy, listening for Kar. 

Time's always had an odd sorta way of staying all slow up in this latitude--it's not just you thinking so, you've heard plenty of humans complaining likewise--but that feeling that every night is a perigee long is noticeably absent in these weeks. And with every day that passes, Kar's closer and closer to getting on his way back home. 

There's only been one time the two of you made it a full month of dealing with each other so directly and in such close quarters. You don't imagine it was an experience Kar's likely eager to repeat. You aren't keen on the idea of getting into full-on bloodshed of the pail-less sort either, particularly when Kar's seeming so fuckin frail. 

But you aren't exactly keen on him leaving, either. 

If it was any other visit, you think, everything would be fuckin fine. He could leave your hive any time of day or night and you'd coddamn thank him for it. Adult sea trolls are--so you've read--more instinctively driven toward solitude, even compared to other trolls. Course, that ain't any reason for a brilliant catch such as yourself to go all quadrantless, but you figure it's at least a good enough explanation for why you get so uptight with Kar littering up your cabin long-term. 

It doesn't do much to explain why Kar always gets so glubbin short with you. 

All through that week, you have the impression that Kar's at least making some attempt to keep matters civil, and that isn't what he'd usually do. Usually, he'd at least have a go at decking you before booking the next plane home. And every time he mutters an insult under his breath rather than yowling it full-volume in your fuckin face, you're reminded again. 

This isn't any other glubbin visit. 

It's the last time he's gonna be willing or fuckin able to make the journey up here. While he doesn't seem likely to keel right the fuck over the minute he gets his husk mainland, he's got shit waiting for him there. You might never get around to filling your own, but Kar's got his quadrants, and you imagine he's got more than enough to sort out with those assholes before he goes off into that mysterious dreambubble-free death. 

So you start shutting your fuckin trap and going along with whatever Kar says. You also start sleeping in the guest room, curled around his small skeletal frame, whenever he makes the slightest of fuckin indications that you might be welcome. You take him down to Hyder all of once, where he makes grand fuckin embarrassment of himself by getting all wasted on everclear with some college-age tourists. Three humans and a yellowblood, and the last of those is just disturbing amounts of giggly and cheerful and drunk enough to throw some unnerving as shit pyrotechnics. Kar's about three hundred sheets to the fuckin wind and none of it phases him a bit, and it's well past last call when you get him hauled back to the dock. He spends the ride back to the cabin sprawled halfway over your lap, handsy and sea-sick at once. 

It's one last week that goes by like this, you biting your tongue every minute and him fuckin knowing it, both of you full aware of the passage of time. 

You catch him looking over a copy of a flight schedule. You ignore his growling about flights and getting home, and try to distract him from it in the quickest manner you know--kneeling between his legs as he shoves at you half-heartedly from his seat on your sofa--but you know it's a lost fuckin cause. 

He's leaving you and for good reason. He's got a whole glubbin life without you, after all. And whatever it was he'd wanted tell you this time by coming up here, at this point, he's long past finished saying it. 

Early one morning, Kar foregoes the guest room, rolling into bed with the heap of cushions and you. It's still full dark out, and you'd been no where near to sleep. Kar's interruption surprises you--since the daymare, you'd always been the one huddling up in the guest room. You're half-tempted to kick him out for disrupting your pile, but you figure you may as well enjoy the free heating for what time you've got it.

"Fuck's sake," he hisses when you bundle yourself up against him, "keep your frondwilting icemitts to yourself." 

"Ain't wwhat I heard you glub night 'fore last," you tell him. You tuck your hands a little more snug under the fuckin boiler of his body, and though he's grumbly about the matter he allows it all the same. While he's still agreeable, you take advantage to pull him a little closer. He cusses you out for the duration, but he stays put, even pressing his thigh hot against your side. 

There's a fair bit of flushed interest, leastways on your side. Aggravating as Kar may be, the looming threat of sweeps and sweeps of autopailing means you're receptive to whatever you can get. 

But you're also half-asleep, and your body is also gonna be lonely enough for pale contact. Ignoring your nook, you let yourself doze with Kar's negligible weight leaning easy against your side. He was the one to instigate, he can decide if he wants this to tip a little more reddish.

It ain't long before one of his hands starts brushing lazy over your gills. You stiffen up at first, but he's gentle, the way you'd shown him to be sweeps ago. It's enough to let you know he won't be letting you sleep any time soon, but not to know what he's aiming for, conciliatory or concupiscent. Twisting a bit to open your side up for more contact, you gripe something tired and half-hearted about him needing to make up his mind. 

Much as you'd expect, he ignores you. His rough hand keeps running back and forth over your gills, and he isn't even looking at you. It feels like hours before he says a glubbin word. 

"You've seen _Troll Drive_ , right?" 

You blink. 

Right. 

Pale it is. Or at least you're about to suffer another stupid fuckin seminar in troll film studies before he deigns to fill a pail with you. 

"Wwhat, _Wwherin a Vvioletblooded Troll Livvin on Land to Wwork as a Drivvervvenger Movves to a Communal Hivvestem Unit Next Door to a Greenblood Wwaitressassin; Featurin A Total of Four Four-Wwheel Vvehicle Chases at Speeds Wwidely Regarded to be Reasonably Dangerous; Fifteen Scenes of Implied and/or Ovvert Pale and/or Flushed Infidelity; Twwo Armed Robberies; Twwo On-Screen Projectile Wweapon_ \--"

"Fuck no. Fuck that pile of mooshit. Jegus, did you see that one? It didn't even make any _sense_ as an Alternian film, I mean what the every last goddamn fuck. Why was Troll Oscar Isaac's moirail even living with his matesprit? Why the fuck wasn't _everyone_ being culled by the main character?"

"It wwasn't that difficult to followw," you say, scratching lazily at his thigh, since he was nice enough to shift it closer while getting all ranty. 

You're sort of hoping it's a sign that the conversation will move on to more interesting matters. 

You also can't quite work up Kar's level of rage about the movie, as if anyone could. Nonsensical as the plot may have been, you sorta enjoyed the Alternian version--mainly, you fully admit, because there'd never been many depictions of sea trolls in the movies when you were a wriggler and you can't help feeling nostalgic about it. 

"Though," you add when he keeps grumbling, "Guess you wwould maybe find it a little," you pause, thinking of the word, "Wwhat, 'problematic?' that both the human vversion and the remake got a wwriggler in the wwarmblood moirail role."

"Shit yes it was, but fuck you," he says, hooking his claws sharp into the curve of your distal thoracic gillslit. You hiss in pain and swat his hand back. "Shitnooked bucketlicker," he growls, shoving at your hand to try taking another dig at your side, "I don't mention _your_ fucknutted double in douchery, do I? Anyway, I was talking about the Earth-troll remake with sea troll Ryan Gosling, also known as the only version that makes _any fucking sense whatsoever_. Even if they did keep the human soundtrack, which was an absolutely nookpanned idea. Gog, that song they kept playing about pilots and human beings, you'd figure they could at least edit that shit out or use a less fucking--"

"There a point to this, sides from yet another glubbin chance to flap your wworthless fuckin nubs?" you interrupt, and predictably enough he gets all cute and growly. Pinning his arms back, you hold him still to lick at the prominent arc of his collarbone, only to get a knee to the underbelly for your troubles. You can't help grinning, thinking the conversation is finally fuckin getting somewhere. 

"Fuck you. Of course there's a point, how long have you fucking known me. If I'm talking, there's always a fucking point," he says, "and no, it's not just to discuss the clear superiority of troll version compared to that human garbage. Although how the hell you explain the plot without the simple fucking concept of caliginous romance I don't know. Anyway, fuck…" he laughs, biting at your throat and fins until you hold still under him. Though he's lying right on top of you, his weight is nothing like enough to keep you pinned, nothing like he used to be. 

You could subdue him easy. But he's just so glubbin attractive when he gets it in his mind to strife with you. 

"Douchesack, fucking listen to me. So you've seen it, obviously."

"Obvviously." 

"Well," he says. It's like he's angling for something in particular. 

"Wwell, it's a fuckin movvie, Kar," you say. It's a movie about a sea troll who maybe has flushed feelings for a greenblood who's already got a matesprit. It's a movie about the sea troll maybe waxing pale, too, and for which of the matesprits it's fuckin impossible to tell. It's a movie with a lot of bloodshed without a lot of returns for the sea troll--besides, of course, a lot of bloodshed. You frown up at Kar, considering. 

You have no clue what he's waiting for you to say. 

"Tellin me I should go for Nep?" 

"For fuck's… _no_. Do you practice, to be this fucking obtuse? Because you've won the all-universe championship award for empty-panned idiocy. Look, I'm saying you can be an amphibious bloodthirsty psychopath and not be a fucking throwback obsessed with genocide and the hemospectrum. I'm just saying, fucking..." 

He trails off, staring at you like he's daring you to say something stupid. 

"You're saying I'm a vviolent aquatic headcase," you say. 

"As if there ever was any fucking question of that." 

You keep looking up at him, evaluating. Maybe if you just copped a--

"Owwww easy wwatch it I wwas fuckin clowwnfishin around you fuck," you hiss, trying to curl up to protect yourself. For a near corpse, he's still a mean enough fighter. 

"Yeah, well. Fucking stop and for two fucking seconds try to pay attention to something beyond your useless, genetic-dead-end excuse for a bulge."

You hold still again, only because--as you tell him--you don't want to hurt an old man. Kar smirks. "You can sulk all you like," he says, even if you're doing nothing of the sort.

"But, speaking of fucking clowns… Just. Bluh. This is stupid." 

His mood's gone all south again. As usual, you're struggling to keep up. You rest one hand light on the back of his neck, just casual enough to keep it from being a full-on pap. 

"No, go on. I'm sure you'll trawwl up the point evventually," you say. 

"It's idiotic to even ask this of you. I should leave you a fucking memo and you can open it twenty sweeps from now when this is actually fucking relevant. There's only seven assholes more qualified than you I could be asking--"

Scratching your claws through his brittle hair and letting your hands comb around the pathetic small base of his left horn, you make him go silent right quick. It's easily pale enough to make Kar's constant fuckin monologue come to a halt. You're just hoping it's red enough to keep this from tipping into yet another night of illicit feeling jams. 

"Just fuckin ask wwhatevver you wwant so I can fuckin get back to thinkin wwith my genetic-dead-end excuse of a bulge," you say. 

You meant for it to sound dismissive, to get him off this maudlin fuckin stroll down troll cinema lane. But it comes out all funny. Your thorax feels heavy in a way that's got fuck all to do with how he's sprawled out over you.

Much as Kar might accuse you of being so, you aren't entirely fuckin obtuse. Still, even as well-read and educated and generally civilized a troll as you are, you admit you don't know glubbin everything. You do share one area of clear expertise with Kar, though, and that's matters of troll romance. 

You know exactly what he's asking. 

And you want to tell him to stop. He needs to just forget all about this pale romance hoofbeastshit. You've always hated those stories, you want to say. All that old fussy classic shit with lowblood moirails and troll consumption. 

But Kar fuckin loved them. He'd pester you after watching a movie, his fuckin wall of text made near illegible with typos as he sobbed over his computer station. 

"Eridan. I know you have just enough sense to know what I'm asking for here, nookmunch," he says. He won't look at you, which is just as fuckin well, because you're fully occupied with staring down your ceiling. 

"Then fuck you're right there's sevven trolls an a fuckin planet wworth a others you'd be better off askin."

"Fuck you. Just… would it be so fucking impossible to grow up for once, and fucking--"

"Come off it Kar you knoww I'm only the shittiest glubbin candidate," you say. "But okay. I'll fuckin keep an eye on him, for wwhatevver wworth that's gonna fuckin be." 

He paps your cheek. You are trying, very hard, not to break down like some orphaned grub. 

"Thanks, Eridan," he says. His hand moves up to scratch around one of your horns, mimicking your touch. "You're off the hook with his shit for like thirty fucking sweeps, I swear. Just, after that--"

"I said okay now fuckin lay off a it," you say. You want to tell him to fuckin ask Meen or Fef--both a whom are, in your opinion, more well-adjusted to an indigo level of nonsense and are longer-living besides--but it wouldn't be a visit from Kar if you didn't have some level of romantic fuckin drama. You pull at him, and he gives in easy to lean down and start kissing you. Your aim was to tip this red, but you can feel he's crying, and even though Kar is easily the weepiest fuckin troll in all paradox space you are just aching diamonds for him. 

You pet over his back, feeling the familiar sharp knobs of his spine. Right now, there is nothing you want more than to sink your boat and set fire to all the seaplanes. You don't think he's said anything definitive on the matter, but you're filled with a sense of foreboding. 

"So," you start, hesitant. You're still tracing over his skin. You are also still trying not to well up like Kar during a fuckin Troll Merchant-Ivory binge. "Wwhen are you leavin?" 

Kar lifts his head to stare at you with something like shock. 

"Are you fucking serious."

"Wwhat? You havven't--" 

"I told you, nookstain. Oh gog," he says. He looks like he's torn between bawling _again_ and ripping you a new one, but you've sort of come to expect that as the norm for Kar. "You weren't even vaguely listening to me this entire fucking week, were you?"

Thinking back on it, maybe you spaced out on a comment or two. But Kar's always going on about something and frankly anyone who claims to listen to every glubbin word outta him is either a straight up liar or complete shithive maggots. You hadn't thought you'd missed anything critical. 

"I can't believe you don't know this. Okay, concerning your impeccable record for vast all-encompassing nookbrained idiocy, maybe I can, but--"

"All right okay I get the glubbin picture wwhat are wwe talkin, tomorroww?" you ask, despite already knowing the answer. 

"I don't know what past-you was hearing the last fucking week. Gog, Eridan. Do you think I would have gone through a conversation as shame-inducing and pan-searingly grueling as the one I just fucking subjected us to, if I wasn't leaving _today_?" 

You start gnawing on your lip. 

"You really gotta? I mean wwe'll be in the tourist sorta season soon enough an the flights are a sight less shitty an all--"

"Dude, that's fucking months from now."

"Wwell precisely," you say, letting your hands rest on his negligible excuse for an ass, still pouting up at him. 

Kar frowns at you, but he doesn't go so far as to attempt to displace your hands. 

"You bulge-gnawing moron," he says. "For the last week it's only been one shitty fucking pile between you and a cabin painted in mutant blood. It's a fucking wonder you haven't done the universe a huge favor by accidentally gnawing your tongue clean off." 

"I don't knoww, seemed to me you wwere havvin a general sort a good time the last wweek," you say, and Kar laughs. 

"Sure. It was okay, I guess. In a general sorta way," he mimics. You swat at him half-heartedly. 

"But you gotta get goin, that's wwhat you're sayin." 

"You know I'd never hear the end of it if I keeled over in the middle of fucking nowhere," he says. "Not that you're any better, but those assholes are fucking helpless without me." 

"Fine," you say. "Okay, fine." There's not much you can do to convince him of staying. And, little as you're likely to admit as much to him, he's right besides.

You start pushing at the loosely-tied flannel pants he's always wearing to bed, and he laughs again, a dry, disbelieving sort of sound. 

"Wwhat," you ask, grinning at him. "It ain't like you're gettin any chances to pail such a fine fuckin catch from here on out, if you mean all that hoofbeastshit you'vve been sayin." 

Kar shoves at you lightly, huffing his breath in a suppressed laugh. "Nookbrained moron," he says. A few pillows drop to the floor as he finishes taking off his pants, and he leaves them heaped alongside the fallen cushions. When he's back on top of you, you clench your arms back around him, you start licking and biting gently at his shoulder. 

"Tell me wwhat you wwant, then," you say. 

You can feel Kar's breath catch, his heart beating something furious. But when he speaks all he says is that he wants you outta the pile. 

"Now," he growls, "I'm not listening to you whining about stains to your priceless fucking linens from beyond the grave."

"Ain't like you got any genetic material left in that fuckin husk you're callin a nook anywway," you say, nudging him off of you to get all the cushions knocked outta the way. Kar grumbles the entire time, and more-or-less strifes you back on to the concupiscent couch. You're already nude--between the cushions and the blanket and the warmth of the cabin, you're forever overheating--and you lie back more than willingly underneath him. 

"This works," he says, kneeling over you. 

"Fuck yeah it wworks," you agree. All he's doing is basically sitting on you, but his skin is hot against your pelvis, and when he shifts you can feel his nook is already beginning to slick. 

You reach down to brush over the skin of his thighs, to hold his hips. Much as you want him, you're also frozen with indecision.

Gog knows when you'll next be with another troll. And this is the last you'll be pailing with Kar. 

You've never been able to define what you've had with Kar, it's true. But whatever it is--well, it's been alright. 

You stroke over Kar's hipbones to his groin, palming his sheathed bulge. 

An antagonistic friendship and sweeps of no-strings-attached nookjobs, maybe that's all that's ever been between you. 

It's been really fuckin good, still.

"Can't believve you're fuckin leavvin me," you say. It's not what you wanted to say to him, not even close, particularly not with your hands all over his fuckin bulge. All you'd been intending to do was ask if he wanted a nookjob or what, and now you're back to getting all emotional. "I'm gonna glubbin miss you, asshole."

Fuck, Eridan. Great job keeping your act together. 

"Jegus," Kar says. His claws hook into your arms. "Your sense of fucking timing is just--"

"Sorry okay," you interrupt. "Forget it. Forget I said anyfin."

You stare at his hands, clenched against your skin. He's gripping at you tighter now, bruising your arms. 

"It's a little late for that, chutesucker," he says. His voice is strained. You can't bring yourself to look him in the face.

"Cod, forget it already," you say. "Just tell me wwhat you wwant an let's get on wwith it." 

Kar's grip relaxes on you, and you watch as he pets over the small marks his talons have left. "Eridan--"

"Let it go, Kar. This shit wwe can do long fuckin distance, right?" you plead, "I got one glubbin day left an I'm intendin to get proper fuckin enjoyment outta it." 

He mutters something under his breath. It sounds suspiciously like "thanks for the classic Ampora musclebeastshit," but you're gonna be charitable and not jump to conclusions. "You win, okay. Pailing it is. And let's not pretend you'd let me die in fucking peace without getting a bulge up that freezing nook of yours." 

Swallowing, you shift underneath him. You wonder if he can feel your bulge's attempt at writhing. 

"No wwe can do whatever you like," you insist, feeling your face heat up. You are a proper fuckin host for one and for two you really want it known you aren't a _complete_ bulgeslut. 

Kar smirks down at you, but there's still something pathetic about his expression. 

"I'm sure I can suffer through it," he says, "for one last time."

"Shut up," you say, pulling at his hips. Kar resists, grumbling at you in annoyance, and you just tug at him more urgently. "Wwanna suffer through this wwe'll need your decrepit gogdamn bulge wwon't wwe." You're still not looking at him, avoiding that painful fuckin expression he's got. "Come on." 

"Eridan," Kar starts. 

But whatever he was going to say, he just trails it off with a sigh, and gives in to your demands to move up the bed and kneel over your face. 

Though he won't rest his full weight on you--wary of being bitten, you figure--once he's on you it's a fuckin relief. You keep hold of his thighs as he balances himself, and you drag your tongue in a long swipe over the folds of his nook. 

His thighs tighten around you. 

Up against him this close, you are surrounded by the smell of his sweat and his genetic material. His whole body feels tense, like he's ready to bolt, so you get to work convincing him to stay. You keep your teeth to yourself, lap patiently at the opening to his nook. He'd already been slick, and you can feel his fluids smearing over your face when--finally, after working him over for several entirely pleasant moments--he starts to really get into it, grinding back against you. 

It's messy and a little claustrophobic, and Kar's hand keeps banging up against your glasses as he works his emerging bulge. You keep your eyes clenched shut, trying to commit everything else to memory. The taste of Kar's genetic material, the suffocating heat of his body over you, the sound of his voice growling out raspy curses, even the way he's making your glasses dig against the bridge of your nose--it isn't like there's going to be a second chance, not for any of this. 

Of course, it's difficult to get any air with him on you. Your sides ache with the strain of breathing, and your eyes are watering a little. It's nothing, you think, pulling him closer against you. You've got a slow metabolism, and it ain't like giving someone a nookjob ever glubbin killed anyone, and you can't figure out why Kar keeps trying to let up. 

"Eridan," he says again, trying his puny land dweller best to shove your hands away. "Fuck. Stop." You dig your hands against his thighs, but he's given up his attempt to pry them off, and you freeze as you feel him pap gently at your hair. 

"You stupid fucking wreck," he says, "Gog, Eridan. Shoosh." 

Stunned, you let your grip on him relax. He gets up off you, a little unsteady, one hand keeping his unsheathed bulge pressed against his stomach so it doesn't writhe out at your face. You're stunned enough that you don't even have the presence of mind to be disappointed. 

"You can't fuckin _shoosh_ me wwhen you're sittin on my fuckin face, Kar," you tell him, your voice rough on account of all the panting and swallowing and whatnot. 

With his unoccupied hand, he shoves his sweat-darkened hair back, an agitated and painfully familiar little gesture. "Then don't fucking start bawling when you've got your tongue half up my nook, asshole," he growls. 

When you swipe at your face--still smeared with his fuckin freaky mutant fluids--you can't quite say you're surprised when your hand comes back colder and wetter than what you'd expect. You take your glasses off and rub at your gazebulbs, annoyed. 

He's one to fuckin talk, you think. Just cause you tear up from getting fuckin suffocated, it's no cause for him to go all pale on you. 

"Wwell fuckin excuse me," you say. "Still ain't cause to ruin a beautiful glubbin moment with some uncalled for an frankly scandalously-timed shooshin."

"Nookbreath, in case you haven't ever noticed, there's _never_ a time where I could shoosh you and it wouldn't be anything less fucking 'scandalous' than full-on quadrant-shitting adultery," he tells you. "If you think about it, there's never a time where filling a pail with you is any less than goddamn abhorrent." 

Insulted and embarrassed, you sit up and make a grab for the sheets. It's thwarted immediately, and you yelp in surprise as Kar shoves you back and straddles you again, his bulge squirming up against your chest. 

"I'm not done, fuckfins. It's goddamn abhorrent. But you still need to be fucking shooshed, same as any other troll. Even if you are a complete gogdamn disaster."

You can't help sniffling, just a little, before grinning up at him. At least he's all teared up, as well.

"An I still need to get pailed as wwell, that wwhat you're gettin at?" 

Kar snorts. "I should have figured that would be what you'd focus on, you nookbrained fucking size queen. And don't fucking pretend you aren't completely acquainted with human terms that so inadequately describe the encompassing scope of your massive bulge obsession, double meaning completely fucking intended." 

"Wwasn't gonna," you lie, watching as Kar moves downward, his bulge smearing a trail over your skin. 

Though your bulge is still--despite everything--engorged and beginning to writhe, you're nowhere near being unsheathed. Kar's bulge drags over your seedflap and down your nook when he goes to kneel between your legs, and you shiver as you spread your thighs. He could fuck you right now, like this; no preamble, no thought for your enjoyment. The idea makes your nook clench, right as the tip of his bulge is grinding back and forth along the opening. You whine and thrust up, trying to get him to stop the fuckin tease. 

Now that you're thinking sensibly about matters, you can see where a blackrom fuck would be the most sensible manner of farewell pailjobs. Kar'd leave you all aching and wore out and maybe marked up enough to carry the memory for sweeps. He could fuck you just like this--when he's on top of you this way, the weight of him grinding on your sheathed bulge is the best agony--and you tell him so, begging and pleading with him as he keeps evading your advances, as he keeps letting his bulge dart shallow into your empty nook only to pull back out. 

Unfortunately for you, Kar has only gotten better at being a fuckin codawful nookteasin ass as he's aged. While he's still not got a shipload of staying power, you've had his talons and his tongue and the end of one of nearly every autopailing device you own shoved up your nook enough times this visit. 

He's fucked you in so many manners that you think nothing of it when he lets his bulge pull out one last time, only to shove your legs painfully wide and crouch back to get his face between your thighs. 

You expect him to start doing a sort of blackrom parody of what you'd just been doing to his mutant junk. You're expecting him to start rasping his teeth over the lips of your nook, to start thrusting his tongue up you and dig his claws into your hips as he forces you still. When he swipes his tongue over the slit of your seedflap instead, you growl low in your throat. 

“Kar,” you start. His mouth is already open over the strained skin of your pelvis, and his blunt fangs are nothing more than a dull and pleasant pressure. Kar's glubbin thorough with his mouth, you've had often enough to discover, and now's no exception. Keeping one hand braced on your abdomen, he's meeting the constrained writhe of your bulge with firm licks to your slit, drawing his fingers back and forth through the fluid already pooling between your thighs. 

Part of you thinks you really ought to be ashamed--this loud and leaking like a fuckin teenager, and so soon--and you bring one of your hands up to make a vague sort of attempt at muffling your own glubbin racket. Kar pays you no mind, shoving a few fingers up your nook quick and hard. You take the three he gives you easy as anything, biting back a whine as he scratches you up when he crooks them forward. You don't need to look to know his palm is flooded with violet. 

Though he ain't exactly gentle with you, it's still nothing like when he's playing at filling your spades. Spread out under him, panting and biting your palm as he tonguefucks your sheath, you can't say you're disappointed. At the moment, you're lacking the brainpower to think of much else than Kar pailing you in whatever fashion he glubbin well likes. Everything else that had you so fuckin flustered earlier--the fact he's leaving you, the matter of your eternal fuckin dismissal from the world of proper troll romance, your hope that he'd leave you at least one good scar to really remember him by--is all tossed overboard. Thinking about anything is near impossible with Kar's hand stretching out your nook, with the intrusive press of his tongue against the dilating slit of your seedflap.

With his mouth open hot and wet against your skin and with how he's forcing your slit open, it's only a few minutes before you're unsheathing. Your bulge surges out into his mouth, the tendrils unfurling and probing before you're able to control yourself. Cursing in alarm--Kar's fangs may be blunted but they aren't fuckin _harmless_ \--you try not to make any sudden movements and fight to keep your bulge from triggering any bite reflex. 

Kar gags against your bulge, anyway. Him coughing around you only makes your bulge pulse and thicken further. He makes a muffled growl, and you brace one of your hands against his shoulder, urging him off. 

"Shit," he rasps. A thin trail of fluid has smeared his face, and you watch as he licks at his lips. 

"Yeah," you say. It's pretty much all you can manage. 

When he just grins all smug, you knee at his side. "Ain't my fault you can't glubbin handle a bulgejob," you tell him. Though you hit him hard enough to knock out his breath, he recovers near as easy as he ever did when he was a young troll. 

Kar grabs at your knee and wrenches your leg, pinning you open. It strains the joint of your leg, stretches your nook into an obscene display. Kicking him back would be no glubbin trouble at all. You don't make any effort to struggle, your breath coming out all rough as Kar palms your bulge. 

"Please, I can handle this ridiculous affront to bulgekind just fucking fine." He's leaning in closer as he speaks, and your bloodpusher starts kicking into a frantic sort of rhythm as he flashes his teeth at you. "The nauseating blend of concupiscent failure and brine is enough to make anyone gag," he finishes. 

And, squeezing your bulge hard enough to make you cry out, he bites the inside of your right thigh. 

It's not any fuckin gentle-ass human style lovebite. It's vicious and bloody and when you yank your leg back instinctively he keeps his jaw locked on you, tearing your flesh. You curse and claw at him, gouging his back and getting your talons all red with his fuckin mutant blood. 

Your bulge keeps writhing in his grasp. 

Even in the moment--despite the pain, despite the suddenness of the attack--you can't feel threatened. And it's not just because Kar's some heap of barely-animated troll bones, either. It's the nature of the attack. Cruel and meant to scar, but noticeably far from any organs, vital or otherwise. If he'd truly wanted to harm you--in a platonic sort of way--there were easier targets right in his hands. 

It's only a moment before Kar's let you free. His blood is on your hands and his mouth is stained with yours, and you're panting and trying to suppress the urge to jump on his bulge right the fuck now. 

What Kar had done just then wasn't anything less than one of the most romantic of caliginous overtures and you are at once overwhelmingly confused and ridiculously aroused. 

"Kar," you start. But you can't think of anything to say, and you wind up just hissing at him to hurry up and pail you. Greedy, you spread your thighs again, carelessly pulling at the marks of Kar's bite. 

His bulge lashes slick and hot around your wrist when you reach out for him. 

"Shit," he breathes, laughing. "Shit okay, god--"

Pumping at what you can of his bulge--the part not strangling your arm--you urge him toward your nook. 

"Cmon you wworthless fuckin ass," you demand, "it aint your corpse party yet." 

He's still laughing under his breath as he calls you an impatient fuckin princess, as he straddles you and lets his bulge sink in deep. 

It's only been all of four glubbin nights since you'd last had Kar's bulge curving all hot inside you, but it ain't like it's ever something that loses its charm. At your urging, he lets his weight rest full on you. He doesn't even glubbin complain when you get yourself all wrapped around him like some fuckin limpet. 

Every thrust makes you wince, less from the general size of his bulge than from the fact that his side is rubbing up against that fuckin bite. Your own bulge is pressed up tight between your bodies, no space between you for it to move. You keep your face burrowed up against his bony fuckin shoulder, biting him sometimes, whenever he's properly rough. Though you can't see much of his face from this angle, pressed up against his his neck, you can feel the panting of his breath, and he's not able to hide all his moans with cursing and insults. 

You'd got yourself all familiar with Kar's body again, over this time he's been visiting. You aren't shy to mark him up a little, as frail as he may feel against you, all thin hide and lowblood warm. Obviously, he's even less wary of leaving you scarred up. 

You've gotten familiar enough, too, with his ridiculous fuckin moods and lack of proprietary with the quadrants. 

Caliginous as he might be starting things, he's still petting all gentle over your gills, fucking you slow and thorough as any flushed partner. You stroke down his back, careful over the gouges your claws have made, and try to stay coordinated enough to meet his thrusts. 

You try to make it last. You can tell he is, too--pausing to catch his breath above you--and for several too-short minutes, the two of you are successful. It helps that you can't get a hand in to jerk your own bulge, and it helps that Kar keeps up a shitty excuse for a rhythm, his bulge rippling and going still in sudden turns. 

But eventually, no matter how long you'd like to be pinned here, arousal floods every last squirming inch of your nook and bulge.

"Fuckin," you breathe out, grinding back against him. "Kar I--" 

Your tongue feels all heavy, and you feel the first build of fluid swelling deep in you, past where his bulge has you filled. "Shit." It takes you a few tries before you can coordinate yourself enough to flail ineffectually for the side of the concupiscent couch. "Get the bucket already, fuck." 

And even though he'd only made you do without all of twice on this visit, you are downright fuckin amazed when Kar leans off to one side, and reaches for the pail. He urges you up to your knees and pushes the bucket underneath the join of your bodies. 

Just feeling the hard edge of metal, freezing against the flushed skin of your ass and thighs, is enough to set you off. Kar's bulge surges thickly in you as the first spurt of fluid spills out around it. The motion makes an audible, wet slosh somewhere high up in your nook, and you have to lean on Kar to stay upright. You feel sloppy and full, and your material is dripping down around Kar and into the pail with that steady, slow clattering sound you only ever get when a thick bulge has you stopped up. If you could, you'd have him stay like this for sweeps. You let your talons out of one of his shoulders, and twine your fingers up through his hair and cup the back of his skull. 

It isn't long before you hear his material spill down to join yours. You know by now how little he produces, but it's still enough--or the pail's empty enough, you've never been a fuckin expert on pail physics--to splash back up against your nook, making you growl.

There's a long moment where you're holding on to each other, the sound of the dripping of genetic fluid and the panting of your breath overly loud in the stillness of the cabin. Slowly, you feel Kar's bulge slide from your nook. Your fluid starts flooding out as he softens and retracts, a final wet splash echoing through the room. You are stretched-out and dripping genetic material. You are utterly exhausted. 

Tired as you may be, preventing the waste of genetic fluid is a hard-wired instinct, and before you collapse you're just able to get the bucket steadied on the floor. The rim's all smeared in violet, blood from the mark on your thigh. You know you're blushing just thinking of it. 

Hopefully Kar just takes it as a post-genetic-material-release-session flush. 

Flopping against the pillows, you're unsurprised when Kar leans up against you and starts checking over your thigh. 

He prods at his fangmarks, his touch careless and harsh. Though you try not to squirm or yelp, you can tell he knows it bothers you, a half-smile coming slow over his face as he irritates the gouges. 

Eventually, the constant throb of pain is enough to have even someone as cool-headed as you get all snappish. "No wway it ain't leavvin a mark already," you hiss, kicking at him with your other leg. Kar laughs at you, but agreeably stops. You don't need to look to know he's done damage enough to ensure the bite won't heal without a scar.

No one says much of anything for a moment, till you can't keep the fuckin question submerged, till you're forced to glub out the exact shit that you know Kar's waiting for you to say. You rub at the wound, sullenly refusing to look at him. 

"The fuck Kar. I'm fuckin stellar grade kismesis material an I know it but wwhy are you goin around markin up someone you ain't evven keepin?" 

"Call it one of the last fucking whims of a senile old man," he says. You frown.

It's easy for him to joke. He's the one with his romances all sorted out. And if you ever find the right proverbial fishes in the fuckin sea, you'll be the one with the huge fuckin signature of blackrom all spelled out over your thigh. 

"Gog, Eridan," he continues, cupping his hand over the wound. "You and Equius should open a fucking theme park. Colonial Alterniasburg, where the troll past just plain refuses to fucking die, no matter how many goddamn times you shoot it. When was the last time you saw this shit in a movie?"

"I--"

"Movies that no longer exist from a planet that was torn from the garish fucking fabric of space don't count." 

You snap your mouth shut. 

"We're a fucking awesome species. I mean, given the competition, so are sponges--" 

"Glub off sponges are fuckin swweet--"

"I'm having a serious moment here, chutefuck. I was saying, as a species, we'll probably always be more fucking honest with aggression than the fucking humans. And it's not like a system as obviously superior as the quadrants will ever give way for shitty human romance. But this," he squeezes your stinging flesh, hard enough for you to cry out, "this ritual shit? It stopped mattering for trolls a long time ago." 

Kar meets your eyes.

"After I die, you're the last person who'll remember the blackrom classics, even if you don't give them the respect they so clearly fucking deserve. You aren't my kismesis," he says, and the words aren't as painful as they once were to you. "But maybe I'd like you to have something of me besides--besides, I don't know. Memories and a pile of shitty letters." 

"Wwe're trolls you land dwwellin sack a piss," you say, "I threww the letters out swweeps ago." 

"Thank fucking gog," he says. "Then enjoy your parting gift. At least it might make a nice target for whatever reject you snare for your black quadrant." 

He goes silent for a moment before carrying on. 

"Pretty soon there'll be no trolls left who remember this shit." He sounds downright dejected about the matter, so you haul him in close. 

"Stop blubberin. You knoww I got swweeps on you, an there ain't no chance I'm forgettin your dumbfuck sermons on your asinine fuckin novvels." 

_Or you_ , you think, but you swallow the words back. And after a moment, you're able to elbow him away. 

"Go on an school me again bout your stupid fuckin antiquated quadrant hoofbeastshit," you say, "just to make sure I don't fuckin forget." He huffs an annoyed sigh, but he's grinning. And he starts going off on some tirade concerning how completely shitty he finds the entire human romcom genre and human romance entire. 

Though you resist sleeping long as you can, you've never got near as much practice in the matter as Kar. You try and keep talking to him about anything--movies you've both seen, books you've never read, his fucked up shitty quadrants. But when you're listening to Kar go on about coddamn ashen romance novels, you're doomed. Kar's voice and the scratch of his talons in your hair and the residual throbbing ache of being well-fucked soon lulls you to sleep. 

 

When he wakes you again, you growl your annoyance. Your head aches from sleeplessness. From the angle of the light, you can tell you only got in a few hours. 

"Dude, wake the hell up," Kar's saying. "As insane and fucking suicidal as it may be to ask to board that heap of rusted metal, remember that whole fucking ride to the plane thing? I need to go. Now. Don't be a fucking ass about this." 

Mumbling, you roll away from him. "I didn't get any glubbin sleep, it ain't safe to be steerin any fuckin boat," you mumble. You are not beyond pouting to keep him for a few more days. "Kar really you can fuckin wwait a day, lemme sleep." 

"We talked about this, asshole," he shouts, jostling your shoulder. "We fucking talked about this. Get some fucking pants on, Jegus fuck." 

"No you wwere just glubbin about it to yourself an I didn't get any fuckin say," you tell him. You fumble out a hand to try and pap him back down, to get him in bed. "Wwhat's one more fuckin night." 

"Ask yourself that, nookbreath," he says, shaking your hand off. 

Pulling your hand back under the covers, you give him another noncommittal grumble. 

"Wwouldn't be safe," you insist. "One more glubbin night an you can get home on the next fuckin plane." 

Kar sighs, heavy enough you can nearly fuckin feel it. "Eridan, this is the only time I can leave and not be stranded in Goddamn Fucking Nowhere, British Columbia for a night. I need your shitty deathtrap to get to a slightly less shitty death trap so I can get to a vague fucking imitation of an airport to board yet another somewhat less fucking shitty deathtrap," he says. "Now come on, let's get this procession of poorly-maintained human transportation devices on the unfortunately entirely proverbial road." 

You know he's probably right--connecting flights are always hasslesome in your part of this fuckin planet--but you can't help fighting him anyway. 

"An I'm tellin you I ain't fit to run any glubbin boat noww just--just go back to sleep," you say. 

"Oh for fuck's--" he shoves at you again, shaking you roughly. You fight to keep from rolling clean off the bed. "I'm already going to be late, shitfins. If you don't get the fuck up I'm declaring shitty earth mutiny and stealing your garbage heap." 

"You don't knoww the first thing about proper boatmanship." 

"Then I'll be practicing fucking unsafe boatmanship, Jegus. Who even gives a fuck," he says. "Eridan, you sack of pretentious discharge--"

"Go on, okay," you say. "Go on an fuckin take it then." You still aren't any more than half awake. "I wwasn't needin it anyhoww."

"Fine, fuckmunch," he says. All the same, you don't expect him to move, at least not for another few hours. But it's only minutes before he's cursing, fumbling to crawl over you, before he's grabbing at his clothes and his bags and the ring of your keys. You close your eyes and pull the blankets halfway over your head, listening to him cuss you out--fucking waste of gills, worthless nookstain, whoever heard of a goddamn taintbiting sea troll with a fucking shitsucking boat anyway--and try to get back to sleep. 

Despite yourself, after a few seconds of abuse, you can't help but let your eyes slit open. You'd sooner fillet yourself than be caught at it, but you're stuck staring at him; the short dark arcs of his horns, the slow careful way he bends low to curse out his pants. 

He is pitiful, you think. Sometimes you pity him so goddamn much, it's like getting harpooned through your bloodpusher. You watch as the stark terrain of his back is hidden from you for the last time. Undershirt, shirt, sweater, coat, scarf; a sort of methodical last strip tease in reverse. 

When he got here, he told you not to be sorry for him. And it's true you haven't a clue which is more pathetic: him, dying on a sensible fuckin schedule and leaving all you shits behind, or you shits, left on this alien planet. 

Everything's gathered and on all too quick, for as slow as Kar's moving. You wish he'd start the fuck over. You wish you'd had the sense to have started watching him sooner. You shut your eyes before he turns and notices, and remember his sad bony ass in fine detail. Good thing you saw so much of it over the last weeks, you think, trying not to smirk. You figure you're successful enough. There's a final rustle in the room, and the door to the cabin creaks open. 

"Thanks for the bon fucking voyage, assfins," he says. 

It's fond enough. Fond as Kar's like to get, anyhow, and you mumble an equally-charitable farewell as he slams the door. 

Outside, you can hear the call of seafeatherbeasts and the low wash of the tides. The measured stride of Kar's feet stepping steady through the gravel fades out into that, gradual and final. 

You won't see him again. 

The words build up in your thinkpan as you roll over, as you turn and try to fall back asleep. 

A month had been a fuckin eternity, stuck with that shitstorm of a troll, and you're glubbin glad to be rid of him. 

As the motor of the boat fires up--a fuckin barge of curses disturbing your stretch of water along with--it starts to truly set in. This is it, and the last time you'll have seen Kar is without your glasses and faking sleep like some fuckin grub on twelfth perigee's eve. 

It's stupid. He doesn't so much as wax ashen for you, for glub's sake. But you wind up grabbing at your glasses and pulling on some boxers. By the sound of it, Kar's figured the boat out enough to steer it away from shore. The motor's growing distant, and at full clip you're sure as fuck not able to swim quick enough to catch up--why own it otherwise--but all the same you try not to run to shoreline. No need for Kar to think you're some glubbin rube from one of his bullshit cross-spectrum romcoms. 

You walk into the ocean, wade out far enough to give your gills some time to get used to the matter, and kick below the surface. 

Following the wake, you swim out as fast as you're able. It actually isn't impossible to catch up with him, given that the boat can't exactly run a straight line through all the rocks cluttering up the harbor; but he's near enough to heading out into the strait proper. 

You surface, close enough now to see him properly, but far enough off that Kar won't notice. 

The sun's still mid-sky, and you're squinting against the light. Every last glubbin wave in the harbor is painful bright with that alien star, and it's reflecting harsh against the railings of your boat. 

Fair enough, you think. Now you realize there might not've been any point in swimming out after him. In daylight like this, it's not as if you're going to get a decent look at anything at all. Life isn't some Troll Hollywood riding-into-the-sunset bullshit, and you can see fuck all for the sun in your eyes. Kar's nothing more than a silhouette half-eaten by glare.

You tread water a while anyhow, watching him navigate out from the harbor, more deft than what you'd ever have given him credit. You think you may even see the boat again, after all.

The sea air is drying out your earfins something fierce, and you're half-certain the light is about to sear your gazebulbs clean out. You watch him for as long as it takes the boat to slide out of view. 

There was a moment where you'd been half-certain he'd turned back, where you'd thought you'd seen the light reflecting all perfect off his horns and teeth. But you can't tell if he actually did, or if it was an illusion. 

A trick of the light, or of your hoping.

It'll take you sweeps to know how little difference it makes. Long as you live, it's how you'll remember seeing him last. 

Diving back under the water, you swim to shore.


End file.
